Don’t buy a domain someone else used to have
by Sapphire (February 28, 2007)
I was right. Project Mai Tai’s problems are caused by the fact that the domain was owned before I had it. Someone owned it until 2004, I think. Then it just lapsed, and I bought it in 2006. From archive.org, it didn’t look like the old owner did anything that would trigger Google penalties. And the old site was still indexed when I started my site.
Does Google penalize for no other reason than that the domain existed before? Read Mark’s article and see what you think. Between my experience and his, there is no doubt in my mind this is all it takes to get a domain banned.
I’ve submitted for reinclusion. You have to acknowledge you wronged Google and take responsibility, or else Daddy won’t return your privileges. It does, fortunately, mention that if you didn’t always own the domain, you can repent on behalf of the old owner. So I did. I’m still not convinced the old owner even did anything wrong - I mean, the site was indexed. But whatever.
Is it just me, or has Google confused itself with the Pope or something? “Repent now, beg forgiveness, and perhaps we will restore that which we hath withheld for logic that would make Mr. Spock do that nerve pinch thing on us.”
I also finished completely recoding the aff stuff. Yay me. Now I just have to see if Project B-2 Bomber’s new host can figure out why the homepage is loading slowly.
I think if I shoot myself, I might get some much-needed rest. It looks to me like nothing else will do it. Aside from all this crap I’m dealing with, 99% of the people in my offline life have suddenly turned into “Can you fix my problem? I haven’t tried anything to solve it myself, because you’re so much better at that” whiners, but the law says I can’t shoot them. Damn.
Posted in SEO Tags: Project Mai Tai
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March 1st, 2007 at 10:02 am
thanks for the mention,
yeah it’s a crap shoot with a domain with ANY history
good karma in this show said something like:
“would you wear a shirt you found on the ground? probably not, becuase you don’t know where the shirt has been”
link to mp3
http://media.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/audio/2007/GK011107.mp3
March 1st, 2007 at 7:25 pm
It honestly never occurred to me Google would straight out ban you for simply buying a domain. I think a lot of honest webmasters probably wouldn’t think of it that way.
I might not wear a shirt I found on the ground, but I would buy a house someone else has lived in if it appears on inspection to be in good order. To me, domains are more like real estate. New isn’t necessarily better. Obviously, Yahoo and MSN agree.
It’s just Google who’s looking at it differently. I think they’re out to punish people who are buying domains for pagerank and to create inbounds, but you know… it’s the system they created. They could at least publish the rules up front.
Fortunately, they’re not the only source of traffic. I’m hooking up with some competitive blogs and getting good inbounds, and that’s turning into non-SE traffic. I still hope eventually Google will rank the site, but in the meantime, we’ll see what one can achieve without them.
March 2nd, 2007 at 11:45 am
You know Sapphire, that might be a good study. How well can you do without the goog? I’d be curious to know how that goes and if it’s any harder to achieve what you are hoping to achieve. We all know they aren’t the only source but still, we tend to worry about them. How is the traffic coming with no google recognition?
March 2nd, 2007 at 1:42 pm
How funny you mention this - I was debating earlier whether I want to move everything to a new domain or not. Then it occurred to me - why don’t we see what can be achieved without Google?
And I’m just obstinate enough to try.
March 13th, 2007 at 2:45 pm
[...] months of speculation, I reported last week that yes, the reason my Project Mai Tai domain is banned from Google is that it used to be owned by someone else. That left me with two choices: wait - perhaps more than a year - and hope it gets indexed, or [...]