An SEO professional was concerned about site transitions to another industry.
One of their clients had a travel domain, and they used the domain for a travel business for approximately 10 to 15 years.
They ended up stopping work on the domain and then re-started it for an e-commerce website. The domain remains the same, but the overall business model has changed from travel to e-commerce.
When they started up again, when adding Google Search Console they found that they got a lot of links in the links section.
But, there were some penalties on the site also.
Their main question was how much time would it take Google to understand the change in business model for this domain?
They have done a lot of PR, link building, and marketing in general for this domain. All of those targets have been changed overall.
They even wrote content related to the business change.
So they are curious how long it will take Google to fully understand this change – that a particular domain was bought for a certain business, but they have shifted over to another business model?
John answered that he doesn’t believe there is a particular time, and that this is something that organically occurs over time.
If you reuse an existing domain by putting something else on it, then over time Google will understand that it’s a new site, and they will treat that site accordingly.
However, there is no specific time frame or duration for that to happen.
He also explained, in a follow-up question, that you don’t need to disavow all the backlinks from the other industry unless they are problematic
This happens at approximately the 4:00 mark in the video.
John Mueller AskGooglebot Transcript
SEO Professional 1 4:00
Okay. Oh, well, one more question, John? Sure. Yeah. Oh, actually, I was having a particular domain. Okay. So it’s for one of my clients. So that was a travel domain, the name itself, right. But they were into business for travel business, within let’s say, 10 to 15 years. And however, they have stopped working on that particular domain, and then restarted that particular domain for an e-commerce website.
So the domain remains the same. However, just the business model has been changed from travel to e-commerce. So when we started again, for adding the Google Search Console, we got like more than lakhs and lakhs of links in the Links section of the Google Search Console. However, there were some penalties as well, which were counted to it, and how much time you know, like Google usually takes to understand there’s a change of business for this particular domain?
Earlier, they were like in travel. We have done a lot of PR, you know, a lot of like, marketing for this particular domain, however can these things help? Because it has been published by so many bloggers, authors, or news websites. So this particular thing has been changed. On our own website also we did write some content related to this.
However, my main question is, like, you know, how much time does Google take to understand that this particular domain was bought for X business, but now they have shifted to x, y business?
John 5:33
I don’t think there’s any particular time. So that’s something that essentially organically happens over time. If you reuse an existing domain, and you put something else on it, then over time, we’ll learn that it’s a new website, and we’ll treat it accordingly. But there is no specific timeframe for that. So from that point of view, I don’t have any date or any kind of duration that you need to watch out for.
SEO Professional 1 6:03
It’s been a year.
John 6:05
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it sounds like you’re doing the right thing. So from that point of view, I don’t see anything problematic that you have to do differently.
I guess the two aspects I would watch out for, are if the previous website was involved with a lot of shady practices, especially around External links, then that might be something that you want to clean up.
And the other aspect is, if there’s any webspam manual action, then obviously, that’s something that you’d want to clean up so that you can kind of start from a clean state. It’s, it’s never going to be completely clean if something else was already hosted on the website before, but at least you’re kind of in a reasonable stage and you don’t have to kind of drag that baggage along.
SEO Professional 1 6:54
So is it more like to disallow all those backlinks which we are getting for the travel business kind of thing from many countries?
So does that mean that we should disavow all those links from different countries for the significant ones and then only focus on the commerce one or doing a lot, a lot of PR and also the activities and getting, you know, the news, but for our e-commerce businesses…
John 7:22
You don’t need to disallow or disallow the links that are related to the other business. But if there are problematic links related to the previous business, then that’s something that you want to disavow.
So if, I don’t know, the previous business bought a lot of links, or did a lot of weird things with regards to links, then that’s something you want to clean up. And that’s something you’d want to clean up regardless of if it’s a previous business or just the previous SEO that was working on it.
So that’s kind of the direction I would have. Just because it’s a different topic, or maybe from a different country, like that’s not a reason to disavow. I don’t think that’s problematic.
