Interlinking and Google penalties - What if you sold your website to your relative?

Hello,

I have a website that is encountering some sort of penalty. One week it will be #2 for it's most competitive keyword, the next, it will be completely gone from Google's SERPs only to return again to #2 the next week.

I have many other sites that I use to link to this one but all are in my name in WHOIS, so my question is, what if I sold the website to a relative and they moved it to another webhost, would this penalty go away making it #2 all the time?


Thanks

 

I think that will be ok, just select a good webhosting site, refer the dedicated one instead of shared or you might get along with penalized sites having the same IP as yours.

 

Thanks for your response, however that's not really what I mean.


You see, I have a site that many of my other sites are linking to and it's easy to see that they're all my sites because none have privacy protection and all are in the same name. This site is penalized right now because Google knows what I'm doing by linking my other "related" sites to it.

So, my question is, what if I sell it, will it still be penalized?



Thanks

 

Having different Whois and Hosting is a prevention rather then a cure, once you already have a penalty it's unlikely it will magically come good once you shift the sites.

I would unlink them, file a reinclusion request explaining you though the interlinking was good for your visitors. Then after the penalty is lifted, you can determine if you want to risk moving the sites and linking them again.

 

That sounds like something I can try.


Let me ask this also, how bad is the penalty I've received? I mean, it is placed in the #2 spot in Google's SERPs for 2 weeks out of the month, so could this be just a temporary penalty flagged based on something minor? Such as, also linking a site that was virtually unrelated to it?


Thanks

 

One keyword is a bit hard to determine the extent of a penalty, or even if it is a penalty and not just Google playing with the algo buttons. You would have to look at traffic, numerous other terms, how individual pages are performing and that sort of thing.

 

Well, just the index goes missing for only two keywords I have targeted, which are small niche keywords.

Perhaps it's better for me to explain it this way, I have three websites which are all different but cover the same "Widgets" device but in vastly different ways. One day I notice that even though I link my other three "Widgets" sites to each other (with two even on the same ip) they are all performing very well. Now I decide to develop a fourth site that covers a completely aspect for these "Widgets", however, because its new, I only link the three others to it but I don't link it back. Soon I find it rising to the top 20, then 10 and finally to near the top, it stays near the top for several months but now over the past 2 months it falls off the SERPs for a week and then comes back, again and again and again.


I hope that explains it.


Thanks a bunch for the assistance.

 

How can you know that it's penalty , might be fluctuations of SERPs from various DC. I had once experienced this phenomenon and consistently in link building can fix this.

 

I guess I can't except that this keeps occurring in cycles. Just about every other week the homepage disappears from Googles SERPs and can only be found by searching mysite.com.




Thanks

 

If it was a penalty it would probably disappear permanently. New sites tend to do what yours is doing - rank well then drop back in cycles.

 

Would this make sense if my eternal pages were still ranking quite well?



Thanks

 

With Google rankings, at times "nothing" makes sense.

Really you have to ask "Are these links worth having if there's a possibility it's hurting the site". Why can't you try removing them and getting the same number and quality of links from elsewhere and see if it improves?

 

I think it's the best advice... and i totally agree with the above.

Google is free to do what ever they want to do with their site, and for sure you as a webmaster can do what ever your want with yours

Good luck

 

Does anyone have evidence of "interlinking" i mean what is the problem with this? I have a golf store and start a golf blog I'm not supposed to link to it? lol.

 

Yeah, can't see why a couple of links from the same host/ip should get a penalty and do they really dig into the whois?
I'm sure the humans do when a site is flagged and they investigate but the algo checking whois seems a bit ott.

 

I have this "on-off" syndrome for a couple of websites, so its not that rare and very likely NOT related to any kind of penalty.

There is certainly noone sitting at Google and watching small sites every day ....
I do not have an explanation for this, but other people have noticed that as well

 

Hell no. AOL link to their internet properties, this is natural Google does not penalise for linking to your own sites.

 

I can't see at all how they would penalize this (or more correctly, _why_ they would)

Imagine that I have a site on ornithology but one section has gotten very enhanced because I'm an expert in the European Swallow (to the point of knowing it's unladen air speed) and create a site specifically about the Swallow and it migratory habits. Of course I would link this from the general site wouldn't I? It's only natural that I would do so. I would also link the extensive site I created about the African Swallow to the general site as well. All valid. Why would that be penalized?

 

Yeah really, tell that to the thousands of people slapped/penalized for interlinking, Mat Cutts has even talked about it. Sites like AOL get a free pass, try pulling some of the cloaking, doorway or linking tricks that the Alexa top 500 sites get away with and you will be shot down fast.

 

I would actually say that its not the case of inter linking your sites that the problem, are all the sites actually the same niche or even related in anyway ? if not that will be your biggest prob, it will be un-natural and there fore google will start looking for more reasons why you have lots of unrelated links. Are they sitewide too ? could also be harming you if there are too many footer sitewide links, google expects the normal "designed by" link in the bottom but anything else could spark alarm bells.

Just my 2 cents