One SEO professional asked John Mueller during a submitted Question and Answer segment about a domain that was used for a nefarious purpose.
They had a domain that was being used as an escort service provider. The site was relaunched and rebranded and now focuses on an entirely different niche.
All prior backlinks were disavowed. They have also been in touch with a long list of service providers who have all reviewed their site and unblocked them.
In the search results, though, they are still getting flagged for explicit content. So their main question is: is there a way to get reconciled by Google? And how can they go about doing this?
John explained that for the most part, this type of understanding of which content they would filter by SafeSearch is handled automatically.
If they recognize that a site has changed significantly, then they will treat it differently in the search results as well.
Over time, they will remove the SafeSearch attribute for the site for these pages.
Depending on when you made this change, it may be that you just need to be a bit more patient, and it will settle down properly. John also added that he could check with the team and make sure there isn’t anything else causing this issue.
In the past, it used to be more focused on older content, and Google would keep things in SafeSearch for a much longer period of time.
A lot of that, however, is completely automated now. If your site changes significantly, then they should be able to take this into consideration.
This happens at approximately the 27:56 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
We have a domain with a history as an escort service provider, the site was relaunched and rebranded and now focuses on an entirely different niche.
All previous backlinks have been disavowed. And we’ve been in contact with a long list of providers who have all reviewed our site and unblocked us.
Within the search results, though, we’re still getting flagged for explicit content, is there a way to get reconciled via Google? How do we go about this?
John (Answer) 28:22
So for the most part, this kind of understanding of which content we would filter by SafeSearch is handled automatically. And if we recognize that a site has changed significantly, then essentially we will treat it differently in the search results as well.
And overtime, essentially, kind of remove that SafeSearch bit for the site or for those pages. So depending on when you made this change, it might be that you just need to be a little bit more patient, and it’ll settle down properly.
If you want to, you can also send me a URL. I don’t know if you’re here in the chat, or if you want to add it to the question itself, and kind of send me the URL of your site. And I can double-check with the team here to make sure that everything is kind of lined up.
In the past, it used to be a lot more focused on older content, we kind of kept things in the SafeSearch list for a longer time.
But essentially, a lot of that is completely automated in the meantime. And if your site changes significantly, then we should be able to take that into account.
