Should I Reuse a Domain Which Received Google Penguin Link Penalty

Mar 07, 2018

Back in 2015 one of my clients was penalized by Google because of spammy and poor quality links. Their SEO person failed to follow the guidelines, submitted 2 requests to lift the penalty without cleaning those links and the request was rejected both times. The client was a busy person and he already had another site up so he decided to move on.

But the penalized domain keyword is still driving him a significant amount of traffic and he decides to use it now in 2018. So the first thing was to identify whether the penalty was still active or not and to do that I use Google Search Console’s “Domain Name Provider” verification method

google search console verification method

And I found out the penalty is not there anymore. Penguin is now a part of Google’s core algorithm I know that and the two key changes they informed was really helpful

google penguin update on 2016

But we all know how sophisticated is Google’s search engine algorithm and to get a message from one of their experts I tweeted John Mueller (Senior Web Master Trends Analyst at Google) and he replied out of his busy schedule which I appreciate a lot

john mueller on penalized domain reuse

Depending on your situation the reply probably will vary and please take proper precaution before start using a penalized domain.