Search Engine Roundtable covered a couple topics from Matt Cutts of Google. Matt apparently took the time during the Christmas holiday to go over a couple of questions that concerned webmasters on the Google Webmaster Help forums.
The first question dealt with expired domains with penalties from Google
Hello
I purchased a new domain name last month. When I’m searching on Google, I can’t find anything similar. Therefore I have purchased it. But after the purchase, accidentally I went to the archive.org and then I saw that this domain already resisted in 2001. I don’t know when it’s expired. Also Google webmaster tools link to my site doesn’t show old backlinks.
So if that domain owner used black hat SEO strategies etc Google webmaster guidelines violations methods it will again affect me?
Thanks!
Matt Cutts replied:
The short answer is that it depends. If domain hasn’t really been on the web since 2001, I would expect any manual webspam actions to have expired a long time ago.
It’s possible that the domain did some things in 2001 that would lead to algorithmic ranking issues, but the web typically changes enough in ~12 years that I’d be surprised if you ran into issues. Typically when you buy a site and run into problems, it’s because someone was spamming more recently with the domain.As Suzanne mentions, I’d register the domain in Webmaster Tools and check for any manual webspam actions just to be safe. Good luck!Matt
If you really want to “wipe it clean,” download all the links from WMT, Majestic, and aHRefs and disavow all of them with the “domain:” operator. If it’s an algo penalty you’ll need to wait for a refresh, but I think that’s the closest you can come.
A “wipe clean” function would just let spammers reset domains for free once they get torched. The possible financial loss of money invested in a domain is a good deterrent, though of course some small, well-meaning webmasters get caught in the crossfire. It’s definitely not a perfect system.
The next question was about Wikipedia content:
Hey
I have this site www.listofwonders.com
I am running it as hobby ….
Honestly I am kind of depress coos my traffic is very very low….when I read about similar pages I noticed their traffic is much higher …. sites with less content have 1000s visitors per day…and I maybe 80.
I would be grateful for any tips or info what am I doing wrong…
Thx you all and happy holidays 😉
Matt Cutts replied:
Hey Peter, sorry to bear bad news, but I agree with the other folks that have offered feedback so far. I picked a page at random: http://www.listofwonders.com/top-10-famous-haunted-places-in-the-world and the first sentence of the first haunted place is “Berry Pomeroy Castle, a Tudor mansion within the walls of an earlier castle, is near the village of Berry Pomeroy, in England.”
If you look up the Wikipedia page of Berry Pomeroy Castle, the first sentence of the Wikipedia page is “Berry Pomeroy Castle, a Tudor mansion within the walls of an earlier castle, is near the village of Berry Pomeroy, in South Devon, England.”That was the very first random thing I checked, and it doesn’t bode well for your site. If you’re just copying text and pictures from other sites, I’d expect that your site would only be adding a limited amount of value for visitors, so it’s not a huge surprise that your site doesn’t get a ton of traffic at this point. I’d take some time to think about ways to add more value for someone who lands on your site.
Thank you Matt for clarification.
List of Wonders plagiarized on that first sentence. It’s obvious why this website is receiving less traffic. You can use stock photos that credit the owner and headline content. What bloggers and news websites own any of the original photos? Not many if any.