Domain Migration for Bypassing Algorithmic Penalty

[tomchase]

Hi, Everyone. Look like I only post here as this is my first post.

So, my site got hit in the recent ALGO and I want to move the site to a new domain after 2-3months. I head you can bypass the ALGO penalty by doing that.
Is that true?
If, so can you guys tell me how to correctly transfer the site. Two years back I was watching "SEOmasterysummit" one guy (can't remember his name) told it's better to canonicalize first and when google picks up then 301 redirect the URLs. Is there any benefit in doing that.

Thank you for your answers.

 

[Bob_the_Builder]

Why not fix the reason for the hit?

When you move the domain and do exactly the same, why do you think you won't get hit then?

Doing the same and expect different results is the definition of insanity.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@tomchase, we've had a million questions regarding the algorithm update and everyone has some conclusion: "It killed Amazon affiliate sites, it killed info sites, it killed sites that are too young, it killed sites without enough content, it killed sites without links." Everyone is looking at a small data set and coming to conclusions. The truth is all kinds of sites were killed off and there is no pattern.

If I had to throw my assumption in the ring, it'd be that Google made a mistake and is currently actively working to fix it and people's sites will be coming back. I've got a more complex theory regarding indexation changes and the coming onslaught of AI content, but that's for a different day.

So my point is, first and foremost, that you're assuming you received a penalty. Unless you know you were doing things where that would be the case, I think it's safe to say you just got caught up in the mistakes Google has made (and have been increasingly making more frequently).

The very last thing to do is to have a knee jerk reaction and do something drastic. Such as moving the content to a new domain.

But let's assume you do have a penalty. People used to try this all the time especially when Penguin came on the scene. They tried to 301 the old site to a new domain and the penalty would follow (because 301 redirects send all the signals over, including the red flag for a penalty).

Then people tried to not do a 301 and use a canonical tag instead. This is the same as a 301 (to a degree) and didn't work.

Then people tried it without a 301 or a canonical tag. And it turns out Google will automatically attempt to apply a canonical tag when they can, when they see the exact same content popping up elsewhere later. They know it's the same.

You may be thinking "Well wouldn't the canonical be acting as a 301 pointing in the 'wrong' direction, then?" Yes, until you remove the old penalized site, in which case the new version becomes the canonical URL.

It's also different when one article is being syndicated verses an entire site build being moved to a new domain. Google's not dumb. They've been fighting spam for decades now and sewed this hole up a looong time ago.

I suggest you just wait and see what the next couple of weeks or even a month hold in terms of a rollback of aspects of the big core update. I see rumblings even today of shifts happening in the SERPs again.

 

[tomchase]

Thanks. @Ryuzaki want an opinion on something. My two sites got hit this update. Facing strange coverage issues (Indexed, not submitted in sitemap). Can't even get new pages indexed. Have you seen this?

Mod Note: Please don't link to images. Embed them. Imgur is free and easy. Takes seconds.

 

[Ryuzaki]

@tomchase, if I had to guess, I'd bet that's pages like categories and tags. looks like you don't have sitemaps for those.

 

[tomchase]

No, I don't. But "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" this screenshot is for every post and pages. Happened on the day of the update. Google is still crawling them and updating the cache. But is there a fix for indexing new pages?

My categories and tags pages are on "NOINEDX"