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How to tell which 301 has been slapped?

spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
edited September 2014 in Need Help
Hi all, I've got 3 domains, lets say domain1.com, domain2.com and domain3.com

I started out with domain1.com but it gradually lost rankings so i 301-d it to domain2.com and this lasted for many months too but then lost rankings. Note that neither of these 2 were slapped just I think had inbound link downgrades. I forwarded domain2.com to domain3.com a few weeks ago, everything was going great until today it seems domain3.com isn't listed in Google when I search for the brand name, etc. The number of visitors has quite literally collapsed and is 2% what it was the day before. I dont use GWT so no warnings but it's quite obvious it's been killed by Google.

I'm wondering if domain1.com or domain2.com may have been handed a penalty and then this was sent to the end of the chain, ie. domain3.com

Is there a way to tell?

When I search for 'site:domain1/2/3' they all still show up in there.

Comments

  • oiloil
    if site:domain1.com still shows up with results there is no massive  spam action running against you
  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    They all show up if I do that. I wish you were right, my clicks have dropped by 98% in a day..
  • 1linklist1linklist FREE TRIAL Linklists - VPM of 150+ - http://1linklist.com
    edited September 2014
    Google USED to clearly deindex sites when a penalty hit, but I dont see that anymore except for manual actions (And even then, not always). Personally I figure this is to give us even LESS data to work with.

    A trick I use internally, that helps, but does not always work, is to let my 301's "Sit" as splogs for a week or two. Make sure they get indexed, and stop all linkbuilding on my target domain during this waiting period.

    I then turn on 301's in waves. One at a time, over a period of 2 weeks. If I see a huge drop in ranking for my target site within a week of turning a 301 on, I can narrow down which one it is - and disable it.

    Not fool proof, but nothing is. Using this methodology I have been able to pull multiple sites from the -100 area back into old positions though, and salvage the campaigns. Losing a single 301 hurts much less than losing a money site.
  • oiloil
    well problem ... at least for most people i know ... is that google behaves completly unpredictable, more like a fury wife

    in my network i have lots of sites which are completly deindexed but it doesnt make any sense at all, that there would be a reason to pull that off. 
    and i have sites which are are very obviously spammed the shit out of them and they have fine listing in Google, so i seriously gave up in even trying to make sense out of this.

    i am only sorry that i am no big help for you there
  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    Thanks... What's interesting is that site:domain1.com and site:domain2.com both have about 50% less results than site:domain3.com

    I thought this was because domain3.com was the 'latest' 301 and the 301s for the others had fallen out of the index, however I just checked my other unrelated websites using the same 301 techniques, and can see that the number of results is the same:

    otherdomain1.com - 14,5000
    otherdomain2.com - 14,5000

    So either domain1.com and domain2.com have been slapped or this is just coincidence?
  • JudderManJudderMan UK
    I have a site like this that I've messed around with so much with 301s that I've got myself in a spin. The only way I could think of finding out is to 301 them individually to a different domain and see if it kills it. If it ranks :) Gold! If it tanks, bin it.
  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    edited September 2014
    Thanks. I've actually hatched an evil plan that I'm not sure will work, or might take. I'll update in  a week if it works or not.

  • JudderManJudderMan UK
    Good thinking champ. I'll 'star' this thread then as I'm intrigued. I hate having to get rid of domains if there is a way around keeping them/removing or avoiding penalties or whatever.
  • spunko2010spunko2010 Isle of Man
    Alright so just to update, my method was to 301 the slapped domain to a Wordpress.com blog, then buy the plugin for $12 to 301 it to the new domain. The thinking was that the Wordpress.com authority would protect the site, although it appears there is no authority for a subdomain.wordpress.com as I suspected.

    It worked for 4 days and then I got slapped HARD again last night.

    What I'm going to try to next is to create blank pages on the slapped domain with a rel=nofollow link to the new domain. As we know that Google does actually crawl through nofollow links, hopefully this will not pass on the penalty. Anyone ever done this?
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