301 Redirect for the new google search update ?

Hello guys,

i have big adult website that got hitted by the last google search update
i'm asking if 301 redirect to the new domain is gonna affect bad on my new website or no ?

penalties go through 301 so yes, it will affect your new domain

tazarbm said:

penalties go through 301 so yes, it will affect your new domain

Click to expand...

there is no manual penalties on the old domains

Snqke said:

there is no manual penalties on the old domains

Click to expand...

I was about to say that it doesn't matter, but I'm not sure to be honest. I know that manual penalties do get carried over, but I'm not sure whether ALL types of penalties get ported, so I'll let someone else answer

If you 301 to the new domain, you will likely carry the penalty to the new domain.

%50 %50 It might not get hit If you fixed the reason why you got the algorithmic penalty.

It's better to clean up your current site first. Fix any issues that led to the penalty, then consider moving to a new domain if you still think it's necessary.

isn't the update still rolling out?

tazarbm said:

penalties go through 301 so yes, it will affect your new domain

Click to expand...

Not true.
According to your comment, I'd just buy 10+ penalized domains and redirect them to my competitors.

praetserge said:

Not true.
According to your comment, I'd just buy 10+ penalized domains and redirect them to my competitors.

Click to expand...

which is why I said later that I'm not sure, you should learn to read before jumping at people's throats (it's not the 1st time you do this either).

Also, why not redirect 10+ penalized domains to your competitors and see how safe it is? But don't do it against big sites as it might not have any effect, do it against random nobodys and then tell us how true your trick is!

Last but not least, redirects can be per URL or per domain, and it's not safe in all cases, just as it's not dangerous in all cases. As with most things SEO, the effects of 301s can go either way (they might, or might not tank), but only google knows what they're going to do with each URL, the rest of us are only guessing (and if I were to guess I would say that penalized URLs on non-penalized domains will transfer the penalty, but again, this is just my guess, which is as good as yours until someone proves us wrong for all niches and all cases)..

Anyway, I gave OP the broad, general answer. Of course that the outcome could be different for different scenarios, but OP gave no details so I didn't explain each case separately, so I blurted out what I knew to be safe. If you think that 301-ing penalized domains is safe, feel free to scream this out loud and clear, but if OP won't recover his site after 301-ing you'll be the one to blame

You have nothing to lose if old domain is dead.
Algo penalties usually pass by 301 and your new domain will be penalized after couple of weeks / months. (at least on index 4 results penalty).
So you should fix your content to not get penalty again and then do 301.

Turbo B. said:

You have nothing to lose if old domain is dead.
Algo penalties usually pass by 301 and your new domain will be penalized after couple of weeks / months. (at least on index 4 results penalty).
So you should fix your content to not get penalty again and then do 301.

Click to expand...

he wants to 301 to escape the penalty, I don't think he cares about fixing what's broken, otherwise he'd have no reasons to 301. At least that's what I think, I'm seeing lots of folks asking this question and they all seem to simply not care about fixing their site, they just want to 301 to get rid of the extra work

YES! 301 Redirection will redirect the penalities too. So do not redirect it.

Usually, if a site has a manual penalty and you 301 over, that new domain will get hit too.

But I believe you're talking about algorithmic penalty. This is a tricky one. The good news is it may work but with risks.

Since the introduction of HCU (Helpful Content Update) the classifiers will stay on your site. So if your site is deemed as 'unhelpful', you will be hit by their algorithmic penalty.
I've never heard from anyone or seen a success story so far from someone recovering from a HCU algorithmic penalty. Think of it as being in a Google sandbox which you can never get out. Google's search team and the SEOs out there claims you can get out of this algorithmic penalty but I can assure you it is pure BS. Once you're hit, it is a goner. That is why people who got hit by the September HCU 2023 update got hit again on this March 2024 updates.

Now that leaves the question: will the algorithmic penalty hit your newly 301 domain too?

The answer is complicated. Hear me out. If your site was already hit by the algorithmic penalty, it means you did something on your original site that triggered the penalty. So if you're going to do the same onpage and offpage SEO, the same content, and so on on your new site, it will likely get hit again sooner or later.

When you 301 over to the new domain, yes, it will work at the start as Google crawls it and you rank again. What I'll be more concern is whether the Google crawlers or a manual site reviewer sees your site and decides to flag it again. If not, your site will likely get hit in the next update.


Of course, 301-ing over to a new domain has a better chance of ranking again than fixing or waiting for the next update to save your site... Because it won't.

Lastly, I wouldn't advise relying on SEO anymore... It is a dead game with little probability and returns at this point. If you've seen what Google has been doing, you will be absolutely disgusted and hate them to the core (no pun intended).

If you are Redirecting to the New Domain make sure Its doesn't have a Any Spammy Or Low Quality Backlinks .Redirecting the domain with this Reputation its Harm your New Site.Focus on creating high-quality content and providing a positive user experience on your new website

According to google guideline about 301 redirect, they Do transfer your either good or bad score to new website depends on how match the 2 contents, like putting a canonical tag on your old website and pointing it to the new website. They said: "Googlebot follows the redirect, and the indexing pipeline uses the redirect as a strong signal that the redirect target should be canonical." I suggest fixing things if your site doesn't comeback after the update. You will either fix your site or start over, there's no other way.

praetserge said:

Not true.
According to your comment, I'd just buy 10+ penalized domains and redirect them to my competitors.

Click to expand...

John Mueller shared that's a redirect from a total different content will result no pagerank or link juice pass. Google is not stupid to let people manipulate their database.

I've came across a dozen of websites recovering by 301 to a new domain/subdomain,
Most of them got doomed in the next update tho, where no changes where made to the websites,
Some of them did it for a couple of times and it worked well for both times, getting most of the traffic back,
I'm referring to september update & afterward, so surely you have a good chance with the latest one as well,

You should go for it if you're hit, better than waiting for a recovery that might never occur,
And as suggested above, fixing the website might get you better chances & longer lasting recovery,

It might get some time to get everything fixed, but you should really take your time & rebuild the website if it's necessary,
That includes every little detail of technical SEO stuff, content, etc...

If you just blindly redirect and there might be a chance your new site gets hit too. Do as per the members said above and follow

301 redirect to a new domain will transfer the SEO value (like backlinks and authority) from the old domain to the new one. Then, if the old domain has been penalized by Google, there's a risk that some of that penalty could carry over to the new domain.