Will Google penalize for redirects related to a company merger?
-
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?
-
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.
-
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.
-
"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?
-
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
-
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.
-
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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What to do with high-traffic pages that are not related to e-commerce?
Hello folks! We run a webshop selling wine and spirits, which obviously serves the purpose to generate revenue. To add further value to our customers, we have a section on the site, suggesting food recipes. The main purpose of that section is to inspire and educate about how wine and foods can be combined. Rankings are getting higher on "important" keywords for our business, in terms of products and product categories. However, the recipe pages, which are less important, are getting much more organic traffic. So here comes my question: Having "less important" pages that do not convert in terms of purchases, but however do get loads of organic traffic, what could I do with these pages, in terms of SEO? Could they be used to pass link juice to other, more "important" pages, that we actually want to rank on? Thanks!
Link Building | | jyskvin0 -
SEO companies, Backlinks and Trade Secrets
I have spent so much time investigating what it takes to move my domain up the ladder. I have so far determined good quality optimized website and I am almost done with that. MOZ Rules! If I look at Open Site Explorer at my competitors it gives me some of their backlinks... Some people say backlinks are not as important anymore. But If I am in a Vacation Rental business and I can get other websites/blogs with high PA to post some good content that I write to link back to my website this should raise my SEO? Correct. I am fortunate that online media assets always seem to have articles such as "The best destinations this Fall", "Getting away for a long weekend", etc...... In the past I have been contacted by writers/bloggers that wanted to trade free stays at my homes for an article.... back then I had no idea what a PA was, but now I can at least point MOZ at their website to see if it is worth it. I was also thinking about hiring somebody to do this.....My question is two part... Am I on the right track about building good quality backlinks from high PA with truly good content. I have been writing articles now for 30 days along with this other stuff and have probably 10 unique pieces plus another 20 in our recent blog... When SEO companies call me weekly they all say "we can get you to the top 3 placements in 60 days or other say 3 to 5 months or others say 6 to 7 months." Being a business person I ask, "How do you do it? and what tools do you use?" I never get a straight answer, because they say it is trade secrets..... or they say they use internal tools.... This kills me! I do not want to do this myself, be an SEO company I just want to know the process a vendor will use to raise my SEO. If they were to say I have contacts at these 5 major websites and I am going to get your content listed on these websites... I would say great. 4 years ago I paid a company monthly for a year who moved my domain name from 70 to 35 but that happened in the first 3 months and then nothing. And he would never tell me what they were doing... plus now I realize my site optimization was crap. Out of 10 keyword phrases, the highest I got right now is 32 and a new guy on the block is less than 10 and has less content and backlinks... I wonder once my site optimization is done will that really really help me. Is it too much for a SEO to tell me specifics! I have purchased MOZ, Authority Labs, Buzz Stream, SEO tracker, I am committed to this... I have 15,000 facebook page likes and 80 you tube videos, pinterest and twitter too... M
Link Building | | nickcargill0 -
Reputable SEO Companies?
Can anyone recommend high-quality backlink building services? A company you can trust to not spam your site all over the internet?
Link Building | | JABacchetta0 -
Google is no longer ranking home page but sub page lower, why?
We were ranking on page 2 and number 4 for the key word motorcycle tires. Google was ranking our home page jakewilson.com; however, we have been adding new content to our site and doing some internal linking. We pointed some links about motorcycle tires to http://www.jakewilson.com/cl/52/Motorcycle-Tires and now that page ranks but on page 3 not 2. Any thoughts?
Link Building | | DoRM0 -
What can i do about link threaths like these? What does Google do abt these?
I asked for links removal and it turned into a threat now see below. Can i do anything abt these? Can google protect us from these? Where can i let google know - my site is already penalized and only showing up for my brand in google 😞 I have deleted the email threads from here - contact me if you want me to send those so you can see them
Link Building | | CMTM0 -
Google Display Network
Hello! Ive been analyzing my competitors backlinks and see a large number of their google display ads shows as (alt text). I do have a google adwords account but stayed away from it in the past opting to use the search network only to keep cost down. Do the images count as a backlink if I can see them in the Seomoz tool? Thank You!!
Link Building | | TP_Marketing0 -
Free Classified Backlinks & Google
Is there a risk that Google will de-index your site or lower your ranking if you have too many backlinks from free classifed sites? I would just use 1 free ad per classified website. Thanks.
Link Building | | finalfrontier0 -
Google penalizing sites because of press release pages?
Does anyone know of situations i can look up where Google penalized a site because of press release pages (hosted on a non owned major site like prweb or whatever), where the prweb page obtained back links from a group of sites that Google felt was part of a "farm"?
Link Building | | joemas990