Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does google sandbox aged domains too?
-
Hello, i have a question. Recently i bought a domain from godaddy auction which is 23 years old and have DA 37 PA 34
Before bidding i check out the domain on google using this query to make sure if pages of this website are showing or not (site:mydomain.com) only home page was indexed on google. Further i check the domain on archive web the domain was last active in 2015. And then it parked for long about 4 years.
So now my question does google consider these type of domain as new or will sandboxed them if i try to rebuild them and rank for other niche keywords ? Because its been 4 weeks i have been building links to my domain send several profile and social signals to my domain. My post is indexed on google but not showing in any google serp result.
-
My keywords now start to show on google second and third page. I think I should wait to see some more improvement. Only few links are showing in search console. Moz and ahref shows 300+ referring domains. I should have to wait more until all referring domains start to show in search console.
-
I am not hoping to see immediate effect. I know seo is the game which takes time to show proper result. I think i should have wait more than a month or two. After this i'll decide to invest in another domain. What do you think about my this idea?
-
The authority has probably decayed, I think it's more a case of starting over and rebuilding the authority - rather than waiting and hoping for the best. I know, it sucks when you have shelled out on a domain. But in my experience domain purchasing is really hit and miss. If you don't see an immediate difference, often you don't see one at all. Maybe others have different POVs though
-
Thanks for clearing. That is why my keywords are not showing up in google search. Because domain was parked for about 5 years. May I know the duration actually how long i'll have to wait more to see some positive improvements?
-
I would say that if the domain had been parked for an extensive duration it probably would count as fresh, especially if (once the domain were resuscitated) the content was very different from Google's last 'active' cache. They don't really want to give people free SEO authority just for buying old domains (that would make it way too easy to game Google's rankings)
They do a similar thing with 301 redirects now where, they check if the 301-receiving URL is 'similar' (probably in Boolean string similarity terms) to the last active cache of the old URL, so nowadays - even the mighty 301 often doesn't transfer much (or any) SEO authority. I guess it's because, the old URL (in this hypothetical redirect scenario) gained links from webmasters based upon the old content. If the new content is quite different, those webmasters may not have chosen to link to it, ergo the content is then expected to re-prove itself (sounds perfectly fair to me)
Another thing, Google don't use Moz's PA and DA metrics to rank pages. They're shadow metrics, metrics which our industry invented to mimic "PageRank" which Google don't show publicly, and never did (unless you count the old Toolbar PageRank, but that was grossly oversimplified and has been deprecated). As such, sometimes sites have moderate PA and DA without ranking well or at all on Google (Moz's link index is far superior to their keyword index)
Finally, Moz's PA and DA don't take into account hidden signals. The disavows on a domain, any penalties it might have. When a site gains a Google penalty (or algorithmic devaluation) Moz's tool does not get an update from Google on that
Buying old domains is a pretty hazy business, IMO there are too many variables to make most purchases (purely for SEO purposes) viable or worthwhile (or scaleable)
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
-
Should I Report A SEO Agency to Google
Our competitor has employed the services of a spammy SEO agency that sends spammy links to our site. Though our rankings were affected we have taken the necessary steps. It is possible to send evidence to Google so that they can take down the site. I want to take this action so that other sites will not be affected by them again.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Halmblogmusic0 -
Sitewide nav linking from subdomain to main domain
I'm working on a site that was heavily impacted by the September core update. You can see in the attached image the overall downturn in organic in 2019 with a larger hit in September bringing Google Organic traffic down around 50%. There are many concerning incoming links from 50-100 obviously spammy porn-related websites to just plain old unnatural links. There was no effort to purchase any links so it's unclear how these are created. There are also 1,000s of incoming external links (most without no-follow and similar/same anchor text) from yellowpages.com. I'm trying to get this fixed with them and have added it to the disavow in the meantime. I'm focusing on internal links as well with a more specific question: If I have a sitewide header on a blog located at blog.domain.com that has links to various sections on domain.com without no-follow tags, is this a possible source of the traffic drops and algorithm impact? The header with these links is on every page of the blog on the previously mentioned subdomain. **More generally, any advice as to how to turn this around? ** The website is in the travel vertical. 90BJKyc
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | ShawnW0 -
Significant "Average Position" dips in Search Console each time I post on Google My Business
Hi everyone, Several weeks ago I noticed that each Wednesday my site's Average Position in Search Console dipped significantly. Immediately I identified that this was the day my colleague published and back-linked a blog post, and so we spent the next few weeks testing and monitoring everything we did. We discovered that it was ONLY when we created a Google My Business post that the Average Position dipped, and on the 1st July we tested it one more time. The results were the same (please see attached image). I am 100% confident that Google My Business is the cause of the issue, but can't identify why. The image I upload belongs to me, the text isn't spammy or stuffed with keywords, the Learn More links to my own website, and I never receive any warnings from Google about the content. I would love to hear the community's thoughts on this and how I can stop the issue from continuing. I should note, that my Google My Business insights are generally positive i.e. no dips in search results etc. My URL is https://www.photographybymatthewjames.com/ Thanks in advance Matthew C0000OTrpfmNWx8g
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | PhotoMattJames0 -
Does Google and Other Search Engine crawl meta tags if we call it using react .js ?
We have a site which is having only one url and all other pages are its components. not different pages. Whichever pages we click it will open show that with react .js . Meta title and meta description also will change accordingly. Will it be good or bad for SEO for using this "react .js" ? Website: http://www.mantistechnologies.com/
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RobinJA0 -
Acquire domains to boost yours, how to redirect an acquired domain
What is the best way to redirect for best SEO benefits? Examples: glaspunt.nl -> glas.nl fietstassen.eu -> loodgieter.nl Any technical information how to (root) redirect for best SEO practices?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | remkoallertz0 -
Forcing Google to Crawl a Backlink URL
I was surprised that I couldn't find much info on this topic, considering that Googlebot must crawl a backlink url in order to process a disavow request (ie Penguin recovery and reconsideration requests). My trouble is that we recently received a great backlink from a buried page on a .gov domain and the page has yet to be crawled after 4 months. What is the best way to nudge Googlebot into crawling the url and discovering our link?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Choice0 -
How to 301 redirect from old domain and their pages to new domain and pages?
Hi i am a real newbie to this and i hope for a guide on how to do this. I seen a few moz post and is quiet confusing hopefully somebody able to explain it in layman terms to me. I would like to 301 redirect this way, both website contain the same niche. oldwebsite.com > newwebsite.com and also its pages..... oldwebsite.com/test >newwebsite.com/test So my question here is i would like to host my old domain and its pages in my new website hosting in order to redirect to my new domain and its pages how do i do that? would my previous page link overwrite my new page link? or it add on the juice link? Do i need to host the whole old domain website into my new hosting in order to redirect the old pages? really confusing here, thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | andzon0 -
Can you block backlinks from another domain
Wondering if this is somehow possible. A site got hacked and created a /data folder with hundreds of .php files that are web pages selling all sorts of stuff. We deleted the /data folder and blocked Google from indexing it. Just noticed in Webmaster Tools that the site has 35,000 backlinks from other sites that got hacked with the same way. Is there a way to block these sites? I am assuming there isn't, but wanted to see if anyone ran into the same problem. It is a wordpress site is that helps.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | phatride0