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Comment by rlander | Hacker News Reader

"Most professional SEOs of my acquaintance would note that, if one has a site burned, redirecting that site to a new site is a fairly risky endeavor for that new site."

I don't think so. If that were the case (and we were competitors) then all I would need to do in order to hurt your rankings would be to stuff a website with a multitude of buy-viagra-penis-enlargement-type of spam/malware and then 301 to your site.

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It is not impossible for Google to differentiate between "some site redirects to brand new site" and "some site redirects to existing site".

In the first case Google should try to transfer reputation. In the second case Google should weight that redirect less.

One thing wrong with your logic is that this sort of stuff does happen, and Google's algorithm does let cracks like this through.

OK, what about another form of redirect? Would a simple message be best?

This site has moved. Please go to the new site (no href - don't let google see) www.example.com.

The lack of an href is not required. Google explicitly will not fault you for links /to/ your site from "bad neighborhoods" (for the obvious reason).

An automatic redirect (w/ javascript) would probably be the best way to go, with a message explaining the move while the reader waits the 5 seconds for the redirect to take effect. (Google doesn't evaluate javascript, to my knowledge.)

Googlebot evaluates Javascript.

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