Penalty for all new sites on a domain?

[TheLastSeo]

Hi @all,

a friend has an interesting problem. He got a manuel link penalty in the end of 2011...it is an old domain with domainpop >5000 but with a lot bad links (wigdet and banners and other seo domains, but nothing like scrapebox etc)...he lost most of the traffic a few days after the notification in WMT (unnatural links) and an other time after the first pinguin update in april´12. In the end of 2012 after deleting (or nofollowing) and disavow a lot of links google lifted the manuel penalty (WMT notification). But nothing happened after lifting, the rankings didn´t improve (after 4 months already!). Almost all money keywords aren´t in the top 100, no traffic increases and he has good content on this domain. We built a hand of new trust links to test some sites but nothing improved.

We did in february a test and build a completely new site on this domain, it´s in the menu and got some internal links from content...We did it, because some sites which weren´t optimized before the penalty (no external backlinks) are still ranking on the first google site for small keywords. After a few days the new site started to rank with our keyword between 40-45. That was ok and as we expected. This site was ranking constantly there for almost 6 weeks and now its gone since ten days. We didn´t change anything. It´s the same phenomena like the old sites on this domain...the site doesnt even rank for the title! Could it still be an manuel penalty for the hole domain or what kind of reasons are possible? Looking forward for your ideas and hope you unterstand the problem!

Thanks!!!

[MarieHaynes]

The most likely explanation is that the site is still under the effects of Penguin.  Penguin is algorithmic as opposed to manual.  What this means is that even if you have cleaned up the links to the point where Google is willing to remove the manual penalty, you may still be under the effects of Penguin.  Most likely, once Penguin refreshes, the site will do better.

The other possibility is that the penalty is still there.  Sometimes after getting the "manual penalty revoked" message the effects of the penalty will remain on the site for days, weeks or even months and then finally one day lift.

[TheLastSeo]

Hi Marie,

thanks for your answer! I thougt the same and we´re waiting for the next update, but I supposed that just the old sites were in the pinguin filter and not the new one. Isn´t pinguin not just for some specific keywords (and sites) or is the hole domain impacted?

[MarieHaynes]

Hmmm...if your new domain has different keywords than the old one then I would think that it is a matter of the manual penalty not lifting off yet.

But there could be other factors.  Is your new domain all completely unique content?  If it is duplicated from elsewhere then the pattern of ranking for a while and then disappearing could fit with Panda.

It's also possible that the ranking you saw initially was a "honeymoon boost" and perhaps the new site has dropped out of the honeymoon boost phase and into it's normal ranking position and just needs to attract links to start to rank properly again.