Your thoughts on 301 and negative SEO?

serpsystems

serpsystems

Regular Member
Jr. VIP
Joined
Nov 23, 2025
Messages
249
Reaction score
212
Some say that 301 redirects carry penalties too.
But wouldn't that be mega abusable for Negative SEO?
 
Advertise on BHW
Most of the time, Google already knows those domains are spam and handles it before it ever affects you. It's rarely as effective as the attacker hopes. The toxic links get devalued or treated as a soft 404, and the redirect just gets ignored.
 
If penalties are perfectly carried out with 301 redirects, negative SEO would be Google's simplest way to rank.
What I think: while 301s are capable of conveying worth and intention, Google is intelligent enough to stop redirects being used as an instrument to attack opponents. Are we talking though about old domains or negative SEO
 
Google tracks people from bedroom to office and way back home. They know your footprints more than you can think. They usually ignore negative SEO unless a footprint leads the spam entity back to you. So, it's not easy to attack someone with negative SEO unless you have access to a property related to author, brand, or website.
 
serpsystems said:
Some say that 301 redirects carry penalties too.
But wouldn't that be mega abusable for Negative SEO?
Click to expand...
Google are aware that this could be a route to neg seo, but they say little about it (this is probably the most recent public stance on it). While I don't have a documented case with data to prove anything, it's likely the 301 will be ignored, especially if it's going to a completely unrelated website (casino spam -> lake district B&B). A wildcard 301 to root will be the weakest, whereas replicating the site's entire path structure would give a much bigger footprint.

I think the only real danger with a 301 neg seo attempt would be if it's done towards a site that is already dealing with a manual action, as that would add another hurdle to get over in the reconsideration request.
 
Exactly. If 301 redirects could directly cause penalties, they’d be an easy target for negative SEO. Google usually looks at the destination site and the overall context instead of automatically penalizing a site just because a bad domain was redirected to it.
 
I don't think 301s are inherently a penalty. The bigger issue is how they're used and whether the redirected domain has a clean, relevant history.

If any random domain could simply 301 thousands of spammy links to a competitor and tank them, negative SEO would be ridiculously easy. Google has to account for that.
 
Exactly, that’s what makes the idea of blanket 301 penalties questionable.

If redirects inherently passed a penalty, it would create an obvious negative SEO attack vector, so Google generally evaluates the quality and context of the redirect rather than automatically penalizing the target.
 
serpsystems said:
Some say that 301 redirects carry penalties too.
But wouldn't that be mega abusable for Negative SEO?
Click to expand...
the 301 status code has never been about anything being automatically penalized for me. in that case, any competitor could harm most websites by redirectting spam domains to them. instead i would base my decision on the redirect’s relevance, its history nd the situation in general.
 
The real risk with 301s is usually one you do to yourself, like redirecting an old expired domain with a spammy past to your own site. That's where it can hurt.

If you're worried someone is pointing junk at you, check Search Console's links report for sudden spikes in referring domains. Most ranking drops people blame on negative SEO turn out to be something else, like content or a core update.
 
Abusable in theory, but in practice google tends to just ignore a junk redirect rather than pass anything harmful through it. If it worked that easily everyone would be doing it for the price of a domain.
Where it does bite is the other direction, redirecting a burned domain into your own site.
 
I don't think every 301 redirect automatically passes a penalty. If it worked that way, negative SEO would be far too easy to abuse. I think Google looks at the context, relevance, and history of the domains involved. Redirects can be useful when migrating a site or consolidating relevant pages, but using unrelated or spammy domains is a different story. The tricky part is knowing how Google evaluates each case, since not every redirect is treated the same way.
 
301 redirects don’t automatically pass penalties. Google treats them as a canonicalization signal, not proof of manipulation. Otherwise, Negative SEO would be far too easy.
 
I don't think Google hates 301 redirects themselves, but using them just to manipulate rankings is risky. As they have confirmed that expired domain abuse goes against its spam policies, but they haven't said that all the authority or link juice stops passing through redirects. I think it really depends on the relevance of the domains and where you're redirecting them.
 
that’s why Google tries not to treat a normal 301 redirect as a penalty transfer. Otherwise anyone could point a spammy domain at a competitor and wreck their rankings.
 
Most of you here said that 301 redirects don't work, but for me, they work like a charm.

I usually find expired domains related to my target keywords, publish 3-4 articles on them, and wait for 2-3 weeks.
Then I 301 redirect those domains to my website.
This approach has worked well for me so far.

I mainly handle SEO for gambling websites, and in my niche, people are doing this like crazy.

As for your question about negative SEO, Google generally tries to ignore spammy backlinks rather than penalize a website just for having them.
However, that doesn't mean every negative SEO attempt is harmless.
Hope it helps
:)
 
quantguy66 said:
Most of you here said that 301 redirects don't work, but for me, they work like a charm.

I usually find expired domains related to my target keywords, publish 3-4 articles on them, and wait for 2-3 weeks.
Then I 301 redirect those domains to my website.
This approach has worked well for me so far.

I mainly handle SEO for gambling websites, and in my niche, people are doing this like crazy.

As for your question about negative SEO, Google generally tries to ignore spammy backlinks rather than penalize a website just for having them.
However, that doesn't mean every negative SEO attempt is harmless.
Hope it helps
:)
Click to expand...


not sure those 3-4 articles before the 301 do much. google looks at what the domain was about for years and what the links pointing at it are about, and a couple of fresh posts over two weeks don't change that picture. my guess is it works for you because the old domains were close to the money site's topic to begin with, not because of the articles. if you want to warm a domain up before redirecting, i'd rather restore its old content from the archive and wait for it to get reindexed, that actually matches what the links are saying
 
serpsystems said:
Some say that 301 redirects carry penalties too.
But wouldn't that be mega abusable for Negative SEO?
Click to expand...
Google can detect those before causing you harm, and therefore it doesn't take them into consideration.
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top