How Much Does Google Really Know?
We all know Google is the next eye of sauron, but does all the information Google hold have the ability to potentially help or hurt your website?
On the most recent Whiteboard Friday, Martin Woods mentioned that Google’s biggest interest when it comes to websites and ranking is the administrative relationship websites have with each other. What is an administrator of a website? They are the person who controls the content, the subdomains, and the links.This means that Google knows the sites you control and have registration of.
Why does Google want to find this relationship?
They want to find it in order to discount links between websites that have been used repeatedly. This is important because this means that links between websites controlled by the same person do not count as much as they once did.
However, Google does sometimes reward common ownership. How? By distributing and evenly distributing authority between sites. For example, Wal-Mart has a website in various countries like Mexico and the United States, instead of starting over when it comes to ranking, they expect Google to give them the same authorship they possess in their other websites.
What does that mean for your company?
In order to take advantage of Google’s new scheme, you want the subdomain of your blogs to have the same authority as your own website. Thus, by doing this, you will let Google know that your blog should have the same authority as your website.
How can this hurt your Website?
The first thing this new Google project can cause is a diminished link equity. In simple terms, Google does not want to pass as much authorship to you as to your other websites. In addition, if all your sites are interlinking, you may be penalized by Google itself, so be wary of agencies practicing gray and black hat tactics, since that may damage a lot more than your wallet. Remember to not take penalties so lightly. Since Google has been doing these practices, they have made sure that any penalties you committed in the past continue to follow you well into the future. That is right, even if you start from a new domain, Google will ensure the penalty is also included in your new website!
Sadly, no one knows every signal Google uses to check administrative relationships, but we do have a few clues. Usually, they look at website ownership, registrations, I.P. address, and even website source code. In addition, because Google is moving away from usual c block coding for IPV6, they will begin reporting through other standards besides c-blocks. Google also looks at different content signals to determine who is administrator of a website is. Some of these signals include identical or similar content, images, formatting, templates, contact details and css files, so be careful.
How would you effectively start a new domain without a Google penalty?
It will be hard, but it is possible!
- Make sure to remove as much signals as you can between the old and new domain.
- Make a New Registrar
- Make a new Hosting Company
- Make a New IP address
- Make a New Google Analytics Account
- Make a new Google Webmaster Tools Account
- Make a New AdWords Account
- Create new content
- Do not link from old page!
However, even though starting over is essential in some cases, you risk losing:
- Your own domain
- Your brand equity
- Past referral traffic
- Good links or useful algorithmic signals
- Old content
- Website design
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