Google won't index new pages on expired domain

[Darth]

I have acquired a domain that was once one of the premier sites in its niche. DA 80. Awesome domain.

A quick history:

The original site and its app were neglected/shut down and eventually the domain came up for GD expired domain auction.

The domain then had a new life under various forms, promoting stuff like CBD, casino, all that good stuff All totally unrelated to its original niche. Nothing spammy that I know of, just those sort of niches.

Fast forward a couple of years and I have acquired the domain, 301'ed everything along best practice, and am pumping out great content in its original niche (which is still very much alive and well).

Anyway, my issue is that Google is not indexing any new posts/articles.

I have put about 20 articles up in the last 2 weeks and nothing is indexed (as shown in the GSC Coverage report). Only the homepage is indexed and there is also about 50 pages still showing as indexed from its previous life (CBD etc). Those pages now 404 of course. I have submitted the sitemap and all the other stuff you would do.

I am not too worried at this stage and figure that Google is just working out WTF is going on with the website. There is no manual actions reported and the HP is indexed (GSC says so, but funnily enough when I type domain.com in Google myself, it doesn't show), so it can't be banned?

Several weeks is a long time though. The "request indexing" button being disabled doesn't help either!

 

[Ryuzaki]

Have you checked for any manual actions in Search Console? That'd be my first thought based on the niches.

I've bought many a domain in the past that were picked up by pharma people to take advantage of the type-in traffic and were cloaking from Google. I was able to request it be looked into and within days they'd lift it once I explained I was the new owner. They seemed to keep their juice too.

I'm not sure I've heard of an algorithmic (non-manual) deindexing though. If that's the case, I don't think you can request reinclusion without a manual action.

 

[Darth]

Yep no manual actions @Ryuzaki. Also the HP and some of the old CBD content is showing as indexed in GSC. Google just being incredibly slow in recrawling the site it seems. Plus the weird point that typing the domain.com into Google doesn't return the site.

 

[CCarter]

I don't know if it was sarcasm but CBD, Casinos, Vaping are super cancer level spammy niches. More so than payday loans back in the day.

If a site had CBD or Casino and then expired it is usually because it was whored out beyond belief and stopped working in the SERPs altogether within the top spammy niches. Why else would ANYONE let it expire at 80+ DA?

Off the top of my head I literally cannot think of 2 more spammy topics, buttcoin nor porn are not as spammy as those two.

Those two topics are like radioactive spam, two-headed catfish in the lake toxic Superfund site level.

 

[Golan]

Two questions, to start with.

1. Did you redirect each and every meaningful inbound backlink to different inner pages of your new site?

2. Do you think, this DA80 is a real number? That comes along with the backlink profile. Or it was pumped because of previous incarnation spam techniques.

 

[Steve Brownlie]

I used to have a bit of short-term success building spammy sniper sites on expired domains and I think based on my experience @CCarter is spot on here that the niche+burned site combo is most likely killing you.

I made all kinds of stuff work - vaguely related closed down charity's former site --> sell pharma products etc.

But whenever I bought something that had expired/been dropped or just let die that was already IN the spammy niche beforehand it never went anywhere. In one case Google wouldn't even index a new page on the site whatever.

 

[Darth]

I don't know if it was sarcasm but CBD, Casinos, Vaping are super cancer level spammy niches. More so than payday loans back in the day.

If a site had CBD or Casino and then expired it is usually because it was whored out beyond belief and stopped working in the SERPs altogether within the top spammy niches. Why else would ANYONE let it expire at 80+ DA?

Maybe I overplayed how spammy it was. They were in one of those niches, but they were attempting to build a legit site. I have seen all the links they built and they are legit. Also the domain was expired by the original owners who let the project die. It had not been used in the spammy niches prior to the expired auction.

1. Did you redirect each and every meaningful inbound backlink to different inner pages of your new site?

A lot of the links are to the HP. Then there is tens of thousands of links to inner pages. For now I have 301ed based on directories and only required around 30 redirects.

2. Do you think, this DA80 is a real number? That comes along with the backlink profile. Or it was pumped because of previous incarnation spam techniques.

100% legit without a shadow of doubt from the original premier site.

Anyway, this is embarrassing... The only section in GSC I didn't check when taking over the domain (or maybe I did for a sub-site and missed it) was Removal Requests. It turns out that for some random reason the previous owners had done a /* removal request... so of course nothing could be indexed. I then found out that setting applies to both www and non, and http and https. So I removed that and 10 hours later I am in the serps as expected.

Instead of using domain property in GSC I also checked all the settings of all the different variations (ie www and not, https and http) and found that there was lots of owners of the account under those sub-variations, that weren't showing in the overall domain property view. Something to know for the future.