Two years ago this week John Chow stopped ranking on Google for his own name and according to Shoemoney he’s now gone “legit” by creating a cloaked redirect diverting Googlebot from johnchow.com to johnchow.ca.
Apparently the site will be “100% Google compliant” so it will be interesting to see if Google agrees with this. I seem to remember it wasn’t just the paid posts and link selling that Google objected to.
The problem with John’s strategy is that wherever a 301 redirect goes a penalty normally follows – you can’t just move to a new domain and expect Google to ignore the fact the previous domain had a penalty. There are a few tricks you can do to get penalties removed with 301’s but that’s beyond the scope of this post.
Looking at the rankings for keywords such as “john chow” it looks like the penalty has already moved across because the new site has dropped to the same position as the old one.
Keep an eye on this one.
Patrick Altoft is Director of Search at Leeds based digital & SEO agency Branded3. Patrick also runs Blogstorm.You can get our blog posts delivered for free by email every day - simply add your email address to the box below or alternatively grab the RSS feed.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
So that means: If you have a lot of bad domains, just 301 them to your competitors and they will suffer?
Can you please get into the details about “There are a few tricks you can do to get penalties removed with 301’s” that can really save me.
Thanks in advance
I think you can actually 301 a banned domain to a new one and a penalty won’t automatically follow. I mean, it might flag it for manual review – but it won’t necessarily ban the new domain algorithmically. Matt Cutts said something to that effect at SMX Advanced. He did also mention that you probably won’t get that much juice passing over anyway.
Find me on Twitter
@Dominik No it won’t work like that because 301′ing a site to an existing site that doesn’t have the same structure isn’t the same as taking all the content on one website and just switching the domain.
@Fistuk Sorry I can’t because it will stop working as soon as somebody posts about it.
More comments from Patrick Altoft@Patrick thanks, but maybe you can send me an email and I’ll be grateful for ever and take you secret to the tomb?
This can really save my a**…
LOL! If I made the side, I would have opted for a meta refresh from the old site with a message to the visitors.
Sorry that wasn’t supposed to be a quote.
Btw, I’d nofollow that link to johnchow.com, just to be safe :p
Find me on Digg | Reddit | StumbleUpon | Twitter
Mark, just wanted to know that, if you have given link to any website which has got google penalty , does google is going to punish you as well.
More comments from counselingAlthough i agree with you with the penalty moving, Right now johnchow.ca & .com are both online with the exact same content.
and yeah, nofollowing the link wouldn’t be a bad idea
he is a total newbie full stop.
Not true, 301 redirect from penalized sites do not hurt domains. Google says this themselves in their youtube channel.
Find me on Twitter
OK so why doesn’t the new site rank?
More comments from Patrick AltoftFind me on Facebook | Twitter
I don’t know why most bloggers seem to dislike John Chow. And Google lifted their ban around July 10th and since then his traffic has gone through the roof. He must be doing something right then.
More comments from Paid Survey Sites{ 2 trackbacks }
Leave a Comment (registration is optional)