Google Sitemaps & punishment for bad URLS?
-
Hoping y'all have some input here. This is along story, but I'll boil it down:
Site X bought the url of Site Y. 301 redirects were added to direct traffic (and help transfer linkjuice) from urls in Site X to relevant urls in Site Y, but 2 days before a "change of address" notice was submitted in Google Webmaster Tools, an auto-generating sitemap somehow applied urls from Site Y to the sitemap of Site X, so essentially the sitemap contained urls that were not the url of Site X.
Is there any documentation out there that Google would punish Site X for having essentially unrelated urls in its sitemap by downgrading organic search rankings because it may view that mistake as black hat (or otherwise evil) tactics? I suspect this because the site continues to rank well organically in Yahoo & Bing, yet is nonexistent on Google suddenly.
Thoughts?
-
If it was only 2 days, quickly fix the sitemap and re submit it. I do not think Google will punish your sites rankings that quickly.
I would also perform a indepth search of links to the new site and see if maybe the site had some bad links and were going to get hit with a penalty for that.
You can also view this post for the 301 redirect
http://www.seomoz.org/q/can-penalties-be-passed-via-301-redirects
-
How long has the site been non-existent? By non-existent do you mean none of the pages are in Google's index or that they are simply not ranking as high as they used to? If site X has been de-indexed, try resubmitting a corrected sitemap. It might take a little bit for Google to crawl and re-index, but I'd think then it would be fine. If you truly have been removed from Google's index, fix the sitemap and file a reconsideration request. I would think Google would recognize this as an honest mistake.
Good luck. I hope that helps a little.
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
-
Best URL structure for SEO for Malaysian/Singapore site on .com.au domain
Hi there I know ideally i need a .my or .sg domain, however i dont have time to do this in the interim so what would be the best way to host Malaysian content on a www.domainname.com.au website? www.domainname.com.au/en-MY
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | IsaCleanse
www.domainname.com.au/MY
domainname.com.au/malaysia
malaysia.domainname.com.au
my.domainname.com.au Im assuming this cant make the .com.au site look spammy but thought I'd ask just to be safe? Thanks in advance! 🙂0 -
Competitor Bad Practice SEO Still Ranking Well But Why ?
Moz Friends, A very close competitor have always been challenging for similar competitive keywords. We seem to have the advantage for alot of long tail keywords but on one of the higher traffic relevant keywords they seem to do well. I really struggle to understand why, particularly with the back links they use Just my thoughts and notes on the two: Our Page Better written text content (Maybe slightly written to for experienced target audience but we are working on simplifying things) Good Clear site URL structure and navigation for usability Fresh content updates Mobile optimized Reasonable page speeds Good on-page optimization Good back links from industry influences Competitor Page Negatives Site structure and URL's are inconsistent and messy Lower quality content site wide They use tried and tested on page optimization methods like Keyword spamming, Bold Keywords,Underlining Keywords (Sarcasm) Terrible back links, all directories and free article submission sites (Seriously take a look) Less focused on page optimization Not mobile optimized Most of the rest of the sites carry on the same sort of differences, Engine: www.google.co.uk Keyword: Sound level meters **Our Page: **www.cirrusresearch.co.uk/products/sound-level-meters/ **Competitor Page: **www.pulsarinstruments.com/product-information/Sound-Level-Meter.html Any feedback would be greatly appreciated please, i am really struggling to get my head around this Thanks James
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Antony_Towle1 -
How to resolve - Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs
Hi, We got this message from Google Webmaster “Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site”. The sample URLs provided by Google are all either noindex or have a canonical. http://www.myntra.com/nike-stylish-show-caps-sweaters http://www.myntra.com/backpacks/f-gear/f-gear-unisex-black-&-purple-calvin-backpack/162453/buy?src=tn&nav_id=541 http://www.myntra.com/kurtas/alma/alma-women-blue-floral-printed-kurta/85178/buy?nav_id=625 Also we have specified the parameters on these URLs as representative URL in Google Webmaster - URL parameters. Your comments on how to resolve this issue will be appreciated. Thank You Kaushal Thakkar
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Myntra0 -
Have just submitted Disavow file to Google: Shall I wait until after they have removed bad links to start new content lead SEO campaign?
Hi guys, I am currently conducting some SEO work for a client. Their previous SEO company had built a lot of low quality/spam links to their site and as a result their rankings and traffic have dropped dramatically. I have analysed their current link profile, and have submitted the spammiest domains to Google via the Disavow tool. The question I had was.. Do I wait until Google removes the spam links that I have submitted, and then start the new content based SEO campaign. Or would it be okay to start the content based SEO campaign now, even though the current spam links havent been removed yet.. Look forward to your replies on this...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sanj50500 -
Tags on WordPress Sites, Good or bad?
My main concern is about the entire tags strategy. The whole concept has really been first seen by myself on WordPress which seems to be bringing positive results to these sites and now there are even plugins that auto generate tags. Can someone detail more about the pros and cons of tags? I was under the impression that google does not want 1000's of pages auto generated just because of a simple tag keyword, and then show relevant content to that specific tag. Usually these are just like search results pages... how are tag pages beneficial? Is there something going on behind the scenes with wordpress tags that actually bring benefits to these wp blogs? Setting a custom coded tag feature on a custom site just seems to create numerous spammy pages. I understand these pages may be good from a user perspective, but what about from an SEO perspective and getting indexed and driving traffic... Indexed and driving traffic is my main concern here, so as a recap I'd like to understand the pros and cons about tags on wp vs custom coded sites, and the correct way to set these up for SEO purposes.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com1 -
Does having the same descrition for different products a bad thing the titles are all differnent but but they are the same product but with different designs on them does this count as duplicate content?
does having the same description for different products a bad thing the titles are all different but but they are the same product but with different designs on them does this count as duplicate content?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Casefun1 -
Text indent -9999px on logo, is it bad??
I saw a question on this forum that was saying that text-indent -9999px was bad SEO, or even worse blackhat seo... But isn't it what everyone is doing for image replacement in logos...? Is it really bad?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | i-kreo0 -
Donations , ethics and google
Hi What are your thought about donating to get a link. Site is a forum related to developing and programming. It has a PA of 65 and DA of 87 which makes this pretty tempting to me, For my keywords and ranking I know this would mean alot. Is this okay to do, borderline/greyish or is this something i should refrain from doing? I havent been 'donating' earlier. Any thoughts are welcome.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | danlae0