Google Penalty Question

[TravG]

If a website has received a manual penalty from Google but the owner just let the domain expire and you buy it, does that penalty stay with the domain? Anyone know? I am assuming it would but how do you get reconsideration and how would you know it does have a penalty?

I bought a domain and developed it but Google has really shunned it. It isnt the best website in the world and isnt that large yet (only 24 pages) but I have never built a website that received such poor search results. Even impressions are terrable with only 3 phrases showing up in GWT since I started began building the site about 45 days ago.

I checked the manual actions page and nothing shows up but Im curious if it even would since I am the new owner. I would request a review but without a penalty showing up in GWT there is not an option to even do so.

Anyone else ever encounter this? And if so how did you handle it? I just think for the content the site has already (and has had for at least 30 days) I should be seeing some movement in Google.

[thebookiesoffers]

this was on SERoundTable a while back, you might find it useful http://www.seroundtable.com/google-c...ins-18446.html

[Christiaan]

If you bought a domain that had a manual penalty you can see this in your Google Webmaster Tools. As soon as you add it you can see the manual penalty on the manual actions page.
I bought a expired domain myself and saw the message when I added the domain to my GWT.

Maybe you have a algorithmic penalty? Did you check the backlinks to your website? Maybe you should remove them or disavow them?

[Pmig]

Yes the penalty stay on domain story even if domain was expired and re-registered.

At some time ago some people buy aged domains and put a 301 trying to pass PR juice to main domain(s). So at some time ago (can't remember the exact time) domain story counts.

When you buy a domain you buy the good and the bad.. So every careful is good.

[edgarf76]

I would buy link detox for a month, and isolate the money brand and compound key phrases , then remove the toxic and suspicious links. I read that The link boost does not work. It sounds like a penguin penalty.

[Jokerman99]

Link detox is a piece of junk. Don't waste your money. If you can't recognise the toxic links in your backlink profile then you need to learn more about SEO and link building best practises.

[baldidiot]

Pretty sure the penalty stays - I've bought a few that struggled to rank. You used to be able to tell google of a change of ownership using a reconsideration request, but they must have got tired of people constantly complaining to them so now you can only complain if you have a manual penalty.

I actually bought a pretty decent domain recently knowing it probably had a penalty and figured it was worth the risk in fixing it (plus it's a .co.uk so comes with the rights to .uk as a backup).

When I first got it, it wouldn't even rank for a paragraph of text from the home page - now it's starting to look a little healthier and is showing impressions again in GWT. It's not out of the woods completely yet, but I have hopes it can recover fully with a bit more time.

Here's what I did:

- Put one page of text (1,000 words) on the home page - no ads, aff links etc..
- Add to GWT
- Make sure all old pages from the previous site return a 404
- Remove all old pages from googles index using GWT
- Try to remove all the links pointing to the site
- Disavow any you can't
- Wait

After maybe 6 months it popped back up in the serps. Next step for me is to add a few decent pages for low competition topics to see if they rank at all.

[Christiaan]

Link Detox is a great tool. Of course it is not the magic tool that removes the penalty with a click. But if you learn how to use it, it is a lot easier and faster to get a better insight in the linkprofile and help you remove the penalty.

Link Boos does work in my experience.

[grem]

Helps if you have too many links to be able to check them quickly and quickly export to disavow.

[sweetbet]

I would do exactly as baldidiot has advised.

[RacingJim]

Yep some good advice from baldidiot. End of the day if you've bought it just for the name and the links mean nthing to you, then you must try and get all the links removed and disavowed and just try and get the thing started again from scratch in Google's eyes.

It would have to be a pretty good name for me to bother with this but I would do it for the very best domain names.

[7ThDanWebNinja]

I would buy link detox for a month, and isolate the money brand and compound key phrases , then remove the toxic and suspicious links.

Exactly this.