Developing E.A.T. on a previously owned domain

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

A quick Google search for (example.com -site:example.com) for a new-ish website I took a look at tonight has some previous history. The search, which is one that Google Raters are instructed to use to help determine E.A.T., returns stock and investment reports, it was previously a YMYL site.

The problem is the new content is not related to finances, at all, but those sites talking about example.com are financial industry heavyweights everyone likely knows. A google quality rater will be hard-pressed to find signs of TOPIC RELATED E.A.T. by searching.

The owner has invested almost 2 years into the site and gotten truly poor results with good content. Time to toss in the towel?

I'm leaning towards suggesting a new domain and move the content but, other options? What would you do?

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:23 am (utc) on Nov 30, 2022]
[edit reason] fixed typo at poster's request [/edit]

[Robert Charlton]

Sgt... from your post I can only guess what's going on here, as the situation is not explicitly stated. It is sort of implicitly suggested to me when I put some pieces together, so please confirm as I think out loud here....

I'm assuming that the "previously owned domain" in the title was bought for its anticipated backlinks, which apparently haven't delivered... and I'm guessing that the search for...

[example.com -site:example.com]

...was intended to find offsite mentions of the domain name of the site to track down the history and previous niche. Methodology is a little sketchy, and I'm not really sure what you're extracting from your search.

I think you're concerned that possible existing backlinks from two years ago aren't helping and may be hurting. It's not clear, topicality aside, whether the timing of the previously owned domain transfer was such that there were any link "credits" conferred at all... and whether the current owner had done anything to promote their new content, whether the old domain was penalized, whether the new content is any good, etc.

In terms of link juice, you may be starting from zero, but you may be starting from a penalty on the old domain. Chances are that the old link juice, if any, isn't helping, because the old links aren't relevant now. It's not clear that they're hurting. It may also be that the owner bought the domain just for its name, and would like to keep it.

The search, which is one that Google Raters are instructed to use to help determine E.A.T., returns stock and investment reports, it was previously a YMYL site.

Are you saying that the current domain was previously a YMYL site, but your search identified the domain as being originally a financial site of some sort? Sorry, I don't mean to be dense, but the antecedent of "it" is not clear and your syntax is gibberish.

Also, I assume you know that raters aren't going to be evaluating this domain individually, and that they use the guidelines to evaluate blind test results the Google uses to develop or refine its new algos. Chances are, though, that what exists now will not help establish EAT that perhaps the owner was hoping for.

IMO, all that's got to be clariified and put in good order, and from that you can begin to decide what to do. If the new content is good, then some promotion might help. If it's not good, and the owner was thinking that buying an old and irrelevant domain for its backlinks would make up for lack of content quality, then you've got a problem.

It does sound like someone cared enough about the new site to put in two years, and that there may be something there. Can't say about your EAT problems, but if the content is really good and attempts have been made to promote the site and nothing has worked... you should be able to narrow it down to a prior penalty. I think I'd try to clear it up with Google before I tried switching domains.

I've recently seen some sites ranking where, in addition to a writing credit, there's a "content review" type credit. That might help. Good luck.

[McMohan]

Sgt, it is not easy to forget the wait of 2 years and move on. I can feel the pain. I have seen how some websites are killing it buying expired domains with links from authority sites and building content not related to the old site topic.

In spite of waiting for 2 years if the website hasn't produced the results, albeit with content different from the previous niche, then I am assuming the backlinks weren't strong enough. I have seen plenty of examples of websites ranking solely on the basis of great, unrelated backlinks and long-form content. You might want to be sure by creating a page with content that IS related to the niche of the old site (before buying it), linking it off the homepage, getting a couple of on-topic backlinks and see if it does better than the rest of the pages.

[Robert Charlton]

More thoughts re your question...

I'm leaning towards suggesting a new domain and move the content but, other options?

Sgt... I've come upon frequent mentions that Google might follow a site's content. even without redirection, but didn't have a Google confirmation handy when I replied earlier. Here's a link to 2014 SERountable post with feedback from John Mueller which confirms what I'd remembered, that moving the content isn't a good approach....

"Google Penalties Might Follow You To A New Domain Name"
Feb 25, 2014 - by Barry Schwartz
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-penalty-site-move-18163.html [seroundtable.com]

- from Barry's article...

So we know that if you have a penalty on your site and you move your site to a new domain and redirect the URLs to that new domain, the penalty will flow because of the redirects. That is known.

What I did not know is that if you took your site and moved it to a new domain but did not redirect the old domain to the new, that Google may also pass along the penalty without redirecting the URLs.

If the site is basically a copy of the site and all you are doing is moving it to a new domain in order to leave your link or other Google penalty behind, it might backfire on you.

Note that Barry did not bring up the subject of penalties in his question to John... he framed it in a neutral manner.... and John looked at the question from the viewpoint of how Google came upon the content. His answer is framed from the standpoint of a search engine wanting to help index sites that didn't have server control or knowledge to do a proper redirect.

In the video discussion, Barry's question and John's response skirted the issue of "secret sauce" stuff about penalties, which I'm thinking that Barry knows John can't answer.... The article itself, though, along with reader comments, is primarily concerned with the question of avoiding Google "penalties" for prior transgressions. I assume that's also why you want to move the site to another domain.

Under the circumstance you describe, Google should be aware of the previous domain purchase and the current indexing situation, and might well view (another) new domain as another attempt at manipulation.

Even if another new domain is tested, as McMohan suggests, and it works for now, I feel that the approach would have no long term future, and as Barry's article suggests, " it might backfire on you."

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 11:41 am (utc) on Dec 2, 2022]

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Sgt... from your post, I can only guess what's going on here, as the situation is not explicitly stated. It is sort of implicitly suggested to me when I put some pieces together, so please confirm as I think out loud here....

I'm assuming that the "previously owned domain" in the title was bought for its anticipated backlinks, which apparently haven't delivered... and I'm guessing that the search for...

Let me elaborate for you. The previously owned domain was not bought for anticipated backlinks, it was wanted for a different topic. The domain was previously online for a company that went bankrupt but had a Wall st listed stock. The URL matches the old stock ticker, not the company name. It sat unused for years before being purchased by the new owner.

A lot of financial sites wrote about stock, and a lot of articles included the URL in the title when writing about it. Most of these articles actually didn't link to the site, just included the URL in the title. This was normal when reporting on stocks, a decade ago.

[example.com -site:example.com]

...was intended to find offsite mentions of the domain name of the site to track down the history and previous niche. Methodology is a little sketchy, and I'm not really sure what you're extracting from your search.

I think you're concerned that possible existing backlinks from two years ago aren't helping and may be hurting.

It's more simple than that. The latest version of the Google Rater handbook instructs raters to perform that exact search in order to try and evaluate E.A.T. My concern is that they won't easily find those signs of E.A.T. for the current topic/site.

The problem is the results containing the site URL in their title and articles. A lot of extremely trusted sites show up for that search before the first actually helpful result appears(35 positions down). A Google rater is going to find a LOT of financial YMYL content, but almost no signs of current topic E.A.T., in the first 50 results for that search.

Link juice is not my concern. An AI handles that, and probably can tell they are all very old and unrelated. My concern is the E.A.T. being discoverable.

Are you saying that the current domain was previously a YMYL site.

Yes, stock related.

Also, I assume you know that raters aren't going to be evaluating this domain individually, and that they use the guidelines to evaluate blind test results the Google uses to develop or refine its new algo. Chances are, though, that what exists now will not help establish EAT that perhaps the owner was hoping for.

The new owner is a retired pensioner who doesn't know or care about E.A.T., nothing nefarious was going on.

The new rater handbook focuses on E.A.T. heavily, and if they can't find the E.A.T. relevant to the new content, it's going to take some work to fix. Now is the time for a new domain if that route is chosen, to get a clean slate so to speak.

IMO, all that's got to be clariified and put in good order, and from that you can begin to decide what to do. If the new content is good, then some promotion might help. If it's not good, and the owner was thinking that buying an old and irrelevant domain for its backlinks would make up for lack of content quality, then you've got a problem.

The content is great and should be doing well, but it's performing at 5% of what I'd expect for that amount of content on a 2-year-old site.

Everyone should read the new rater handbook, it's nothing like it was just a couple of years ago. E.A.T. is applied to all searches, to all sites, and it must be evaluated.

About E.A.T., I am aware that a different amount of E.A.T. evidence is needed for different topics. I know that less E.A.T. evidence is needed for a forum about a harmless topic, for example. The new rater handbook gives a LOT of examples, and mentions E.A.T. in every section.

For this particular site, comparing it to the examples provided, it falls in the informational bin and requires mid-level proof of E.A.T. because people can wreck their fairly expensive widgets if the information is bad.

According to the rater handbook examples, a site in this category can only receive a LOW to MEDIUM rating if the E.A.T. is missing or insufficient. I'm focusing on that because everything else looks fine, and the rater handbook says it's important. All backlinks older than 2 years were disavowed.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

E.A.T. is turning into backlinks 2.0

More about E.A.T. Sections like 3 and 3.1 of the rater guidelines tell how important E.A.T. has become to Google. High E-A-T pages on hobbies, such as photography or learning to play a guitar, require proof of E.A.T. (their words) or a site rating of low to medium will apply (as shown in their examples).

I bet many (most?) webmasters would not think a site about learning to play the guitar requires proof of E.A.T. to get a rating above Medium. Just wait until they read the handbook and find out even a humor site displaying memes needs proof of it, from trusted sites they don't own or control.

The handbook says there is no reason for anonymity and I see good sites ranking poorly all the time because they don't include an author name to their articles, or don't have an informative about page. Clearly a lot of webmasters are not up to speed on the importance of E.A.T., it's not just for YMYL sites, it's for every query (stated in the rater handbook).

Google doesn't tell you to work on E.A.T. in their guidelines because it's not going to be trusted if you can manipulate it, you can't do anything about it...

But you can. You can make it easier to find. You can clean up cruft that buries actual signs of E.A.T. in search rankings. You can help others trust you enough to talk about you by surfacing your E.A.T. for them too. etc.

[engine]

For reference, you may find this thread of interest [webmasterworld.com...] on E.A.T. Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

.. and you can find the link to the most current Google rater handbook on this Google page - [support.google.com...]

E.A.T. has only become more important over time since that 2014 WW article. Improtant for google. Like it or hate it moving away from backlinks has meant moving towards E.A.T. At least with backlinks the creators who didn't feel like getting them didn't have to. With E.A.T. you have to keep an eye on it

Same dance, new monster.

P.S. If you work for Google and read this, please consider a feature in Search Console to notify Google that you've just purchased a domain and this is day #1. Erase it's backlink history and consider everything you think you know about the domain obsolete. Please. Buying a domain with previous history should not cause problems, or yield benefits.