Offline mode = seo penalized?

[SammyS]

Hi. Im developing a new forum and for a few months I dont want anyone to see it. My question is if putting it on off- line mode could be penalized by google

[opentype]

You mean you have an already index live site – want to turn it offline for a few months – and then reopen it?
Well, yes, that would hurt your ranking. If your site can’t be reached for weeks, it will be demoted. 

A better approach would be to develop the new version with a developer installation under a different domain and then just switch over when you are done. 

[SammyS]

9 minutes ago, opentype said:

You mean you have an already index live site – want to turn it offline for a few months – and then reopen it?
Well, yes, that would hurt your ranking. If your site can’t be reached for weeks, it will be demoted. 

A better approach would be to develop the new version with a developer installation under a different domain and then just switch over when you are done. 

Hi, thanks for answering

Yes, its a site already created 5 months ago, it´s empty, no users  as I design it. I dont have much to lose about positioning/seo but I fear that in the future these months in offline mode could harm it  ( I guess these could tell google my site isnt a reliable one)

I could ban visitors and members  from entering and see my site, but maybe this also harms me with google , I dont know

 

 

[opentype]

2 minutes ago, SammyS said:

 I dont have much to lose about positioning/seo but I fear that in the future these months in offline mode could harm it  ( I guess these could tell google my site isnt a reliable one

I see. No, I wouldn’t know why this should be a problem. If you haven’t built up your ranking so far, you don’t have anything to loose. As soon as you put your site online again, it will be indexed then. The search engine doesn’t care whether the site was unused or inaccessible for months or even years when it comes to indexing the new project on this domain.  

[SammyS]

On 10/7/2016 at 2:25 PM, opentype said:

I see. No, I wouldn’t know why this should be a problem. If you haven’t built up your ranking so far, you don’t have anything to loose. As soon as you put your site online again, it will be indexed then. The search engine doesn’t care whether the site was unused or inaccessible for months or even years when it comes to indexing the new project on this domain.  

 

I see. I hope you´re right! greetings