I am looking for a case study to show starting over was the best option.

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Greg Kristan: Can anybody point me to an article (or a case study) showing a site that was penalized and then restarted (with a new domain) and had success? I am looking for a case study to show starting over was the best option rather than try and fight the penalty and continue to lose traffic
  
  Thanks!
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  Phil Buckley: I can't point you to an article, but I worked at a company that went through that exact scenario. We started over moving from .com to .org and everything was fine.
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  Greg Kristan:  ;are you able to provide a link to the analytics as a screenshot showing the change? That way I can pass that along to the client showing a before and after
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  Pe lagic: Hi Greg, two questions>
  1. Is it the exact same site on the new domain ?
  2. Is the old domain redirected to the new domain ?
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  Greg Kristan: Hi +Pe lagic ;
  
  I am looking to see if there is a case study of lets say an e commerce site that sells water filters that got penalized. Then they decided to restart and create a new domain also selling water filters. Right before they launched the new site they took down all of the pages on the old site so it was just a homepage that said we are now this new site (Without a link) so they would not be spamming the search results. Then the new site once launched was able to prove that by restarting they were able to sell more water filters then they were with a penalized site
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  Pe lagic: OK so assuming there are no redirects or links between the two.
  
  Is the design and/or the content of the new site the same as the old ?
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  Greg Kristan: correct that they are no links, and the content and design will be completely different
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  Pe lagic: What is the purpose of taking down all of the pages on the old site ? if the new site is going to be completely different ?
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  Jim Munro: Didn't someone say recently that Google is looking at associated sites once a penalty is applied, or was that not meant to apply to sites created subsequently? :)
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  Iblis Bane: Damn, I saw an article recently about it. ; This isn't it, but I can't find that one: ; http://searchengineland.com/the-link-shrink-is-in-is-starting-over-the-best-option-149671
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  Greg Kristan: +Pe lagic ;The reason why you want to take down the other pages is because that is in violation of Google's quality guidelines as there could be a chance the same guy can have two ads and 2 organic listings for virtually the same product and price, just slightly different content. ;The client will still be selling the same ;product, just the content will be different. ;I think +Jim Munro ;that is what you are referring to right?
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  Allen Borza: +Phil Buckley ;I'm curious, did you guys compared rankings? Moving to a new site is like starting from zero. How long did it take to get back the rankings? A good alternative maybe using subdomains, since Google treats them as if they were completely separate domains.
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  Jim Munro: No, +Greg Kristan. I cannot remember where I saw it now. Maybe I dreamed it. :) ;
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  Greg Kristan: +Jim Munro ;hahah that is alright. +Allen Borza ;we have a client that actually had the subdomains pass over a penalty to the site since the subdomains contained pure spam from Google's perspective.
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  bharat thakare: Migrating the website to a new domain will not serve the purpose since Google recently said that doing so will transfer the penalty to the new domain. Here's the link to the video from John Mueller: English Google Webmaster Central B&M SMB Site-Clinic office-hours hangout
  
  As far as resolving the penalty is concerned, the best way is not to hide from it but to clean up the links. I am assuming that the website is penalized for unnatural backlinks. Analyze all your webmaster backlinks and make every attempt possible to either remove or no follow low quality links. Disavow the links only when you are unable to clean up links through outreach. When filing a reconsideration, provide evidence of your efforts through snapshots. Host the snapshots on Google docs and share the link in your reconsideration letter. Explain each and every step that you took along with numbers. Trust me it works. Sorry for the lengthy post.
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  Greg Kristan: Hi +bharat thakare ;, the penalty is an algorithm but here are a few things about the site.
  
  1) Hacked content
  2) 60k Spam Comments
  3) Over optimized keywords on site
  4) Bad external links
  5) Had a mirror site that got slammed by Google
  
  I would not want anything to migrate over but instead create all new pages and create a brand new site without a 301 or 302 redirect and no links from the old site. The old site will be consolidated to just the homepage telling users that they are here now (without a link but showing the URL)
  
  Do you think that is a good plan?
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  Iblis Bane: A brand new site on a new domain...no redirects...off the top of my head, I shouldn't think it would have any problems. ; Nothing is going to be passed anyway. ; Is it going to be the same brand name?
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  W.E. Jonk: From the expert panel in this weeks SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:51:32 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/i_am_looking_for_a_case_study_to_show_starting_over_was_the_best_option +Greg Kristan