Will Google penalize for redirects related to a company merger?

[5outhpaw]

Company A is set to acquire Company B. As part of the merger agreement, Company A will be redirecting the linking domains of Company B's website (over 1,000 links) to company A's website.

Will Google penalize Company A for redirecting Company B's 1,000 linking domains to Company A's website at one time? If so, would it be better for Company A to redirect Company B's 1,000 linking domains in waves?

[irvingw]

You can redirect them all with no issues if the companies websites are compliant. That is they are not penalized domains, and also not overly interlinked to each other.Too many websites for one company is against Googles rules, you're only supposed to have one horse in the race.

My suggestion would be to look at each site one at a time and vet it for compliance, once you have determined that it's a healthy site with no bad link building done on it, it would be safe to 301 redirect it to your new site.

This is just being super cautious though, because theoretically you have no control over who 301's a site to your domain. If Google penalized a site based on that then competition would take penalized spam domains and 301 them to the competitions sites in an effort to get them penalized. That being said, I wouldn't want any penalized sites to be 301ing to my site just to be on the safe side.

[RyanKent]

If I am understanding you correctly, you would be redirecting Company B's website to Company A, correct? If so, you are welcome to redirect the entire site whether it is 10 pages or a million pages. It is a normal part of the internet and there is no penalty involved.

When you refer to 1000 linking domains it sounds like you are not referring to Company B's website, but the many domains which link to Company B. Normally a company does not have direct control over the sites which link to it. For example, it is possible for 1000 people, companies or SEO websites to link to this Q&A thread. SEOmoz has no control over who links to the thread. If SEOmoz wished to move the thread, they could do so and 301 redirect the thread, but they cannot go to the 1000 linking domains and force them to change the URL.

I believe you are simply referring to redirecting Company B's website in which case there are no concerns. If you are talking about generating 1000 unique links to Company A's site from 1000 linking domains, there is a concern about having such an unnatural growth in links. It is dependent on the Company A site. If the site has a million links, then no problem. If the site has only 1000 links and you double overnight, that can possibly trigger an algorithmic penalty.

[gfiorelli1]

Well... yes, they are quite a lot.

But that agreement means also the disappearance of the site B? Or the merge of site B in site A.

Because if it is the second option, you could redirect all the site B (better if you take care of page similarity and not just 301 to the site A home page).

Then in GWT of site B you can advice Google that Site B is moved to site A. That way you are officially saying to Google: "Hey Matt, I'm moving and also my links are moving with me; therefore don't take wrong decision, because nothing black is happening :)".

Check this old Q&A for more infos about this procedures: http://www.seomoz.org/q/co-uk-to-com-transfer-of-domain

[5outhpaw]

"If you are talking about generating 1000 unique links to Company A's site from 1000 linking domains, there is a concern about having such an unnatural growth in links. It is dependent on the Company A site. If the site has a million links, then no problem. If the site has only 1000 links and you double overnight, that can possibly trigger an algorithmic penalty."

Actually, this is exactly what I'm talking about. What then would be the ideal number of links to redirect so as not to be penalized?

[RyanKent]

No one knows what Google's algorithm metrics are, and even if they did the algorithms receive 500 changes per year.

As I shared, it depends on how many links the site already has established. If your site has a million linking domains then 1000 more is not even a thought. If your site has only 1000 linking domains then doubling the links overnight will surely set off algorithmic alarms.

It is my best guess Google would look at patterns. If a site has existed for 2 years and has 1000 linking domains, that averages to 42 new linking domains per month. I would feel comfortable doubling or tripling that number in a given month,  but not going to much past that point.

I would also caution if you truly have control to 1000 unique linking domains, you need to have an extremely sophisticated black hat operation established. That would require 1000 unique domain registrations, 1000 unique c-block IPs, 1000 unique web designs, each site would have to earn unique back links, etc. The overwhelming majority of people who attempt to set anything like this up are caught and the entire network is categorized as an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings, and all links from all sites would be devalued.

[5outhpaw]

Thanks for your help on this question Ryan, irvingw and Gianluca.

Being that I am still an SEO newbie, looking back at my original question, redirect probably wasn't the correct word to use and my example could have been clearer and more concise, my apologies (still learning).

There's nothing black hat going on here, so no worries; but thanks for the words of warning. The links being discussed are from sites like Wikipedia, and other public profile pages. We're making sure that those public pages point to the correct URL. And since Company B was acquired by Company A, those public profile URL's should no longer point to www.CompanyB.com. They should all be pointing to www.CompanyA.com, instead.