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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?

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Did you manage to find out any more on this? Do you have a link to any 'official' reference regarding forwarding banned domains and the effect this can have on the recipient domain? – w3d May 19 '12 at 10:45
@w3d unfortunately not. – motto May 20 '12 at 0:12
what happens basically is that the 'banned' domain stops providing 'juice'. So if your site depends on paid links from domains to pump you up in the search results, when Google bans those domains, they'll stop giving weight to your site, and your site drops in ranking. But that's different than banning domains just because they are directed from other domains. – Rodolfo May 24 '12 at 20:06

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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.

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there is no going back. Once your site is banned it's banned...Nothing you can do about it except for killing the site with all it's content, start all over again with the right content and re-submit for consideration. You can even transfer the domain to another name and tell google you just bought the domain fresh.

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do you have a source for this? – Christofian Jun 23 '12 at 23:18

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