What would happen if a domain that was banned from google was redirected to an unbanned domain? Would the ban follow over to the new domain, or would the new domain be unaffected?Also, if the ban follows over, wouldn't that mean that someone could sabotage a sites rankings by redirecting a banned domain? If so, what can be done about it?
What happens if a banned domain is redirected to another domain?
seo;google;redirects
There was an experiment done in 2007 on a forum, and the conclusion was that, no, the penalty is not forwarded. However, I'm not sure how reliable that is, and Google might have changes it's algorithms since then.Here's another account from 2011, and from what I can understand is that this person cloned the banned site, and the redirected the original to a new domain. This worked for about a week, indicating that Google didn't transfer the penalty, but after that google noticed that the same site was violating their guidelines and re-banned it.There is also an inconclusive blog post on SEOMoz that doesn't have a lot of info.Basically the research is inconclusive, but it points to the penalty not being transferred. That makes a lot of sense (for google), because otherwise people would be using this to sabotage their competitors, which is something google wants to avoid. And, if google can ban one domain, if another domain name is exactly the same I'm pretty sure google will ban that one too.