Re-Direct

[ypl]

We plan to re-direct our current site to a new site (with a new domain name as well) because the current site has many unnatural links and it would take too many hours to fix it and yet, the result is unknown and also the site has issues with userability and other SEO issues.

Our question: since the current site is associated with unnatural links, but, it is a domain with 12 years history, should we re-direct it to the new website?  My understanding is that no one is sure if the penalty will be carried over, is it something we can cut off if it happened? or should we not to risk re-direct, and just start from fresh?

[AlanMosley]

It is almost certain that the penalty is carried over. If i were a search engine i would ceratinly make sure thet loop hole was not avaialble.

If you know the domains that are affected, you can redirect conditionly to fic the problem.

[Thos003]

If the penalties carry over and it's an algorithmic penalty then simply undoing it would undo the penalty. From what I hear the penalties don't carry through a 301 redirect. If you are worried about penalties then it would be best to make the 301 redirects and not notify google through webmaster tools of the site move.

Logically, if 301 redirects could carry penalties over then we would have a whole new set of nasty tricks happening. Could you imagine being able to simply redirect a few websites to take down a competitor?

[AlanMosley]

A web site would have to be configured to acceppt that domain using host headers or to point taht domain to a interanl ip address so except for the unusealy setup that trick would not work in the vast majority of cases.

If 301ing good links works, then why not bad ones.

[ypl]

I understand both of your views (Alan and Thomas'), and my feel for it is 50 & 50, hmmm, what should I do?

Can I then, have both sites, let the current one there to capture residual sales from SEO, and keep the new one separate, and build from scratch.  Does this sound like a good plan?

[AlanMosley]

yes you can, but I would try and filter the good links from teh bad and redirect only them.

[AlanBleiweiss]

I've read countless people's take on the "will the bad follow the 301" issue and need to say I've seen about a 50/50 split.  I have yet to see an actual case study on it though.

The fact that the existing site is 12 years old is also something with varying views - the only real benefit for age is for a site that gets 301 redirects with no content change on a page-to-page level (UX design can change without impacting that). If you were to 301 and change content, any age value would be lost as soon as Google reevaluated the new content based on current factors.

So the issue does come down to whether to 301 or not.  Hopefully someone has done a real case study and will at some point blog about it or provide a link to it if it's already out there.

[Thos003]

Its a great discussion. I doubt that Google or Bing will give us a real answer.

But if you can forward negative SEO then we are in a heap of trouble.

As far as testing this, I say go for it. Mr. Cutts says that if you get an algo penalty and you undo it then the penalty is undone.