Registering expired domains

[PeterM22]

Hi there,

I've found a good domain that is available for a new project. It has been expired for about 4 months or so. It has a couple of links, with the domain name as an anchor, nothing horrible. Will buying a domain like this be safe from an seo perspective? I'm guessing it would be treated the same as buying a new domain that has never been registered before, Would I be right?

Peter

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Peter

It should, pretty much be like buying a new domain. The only caveat there would be if there was lots of negative equity, bad links etc hung on the back of the domain but if you have had a good solid look then I would not sweat that.

Additionally, when a domain has a new owner, Google claim they 'reset' the domain so any previous link equity, good or bad would be removed. I am not sure how well that works with Penguin etc but again, if they domain looks clean I would not worry about it too much.

Some useful further reading here:

http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/015966.html

Hope that helps

Marcus

[irvingw]

Go to archive.org and take a look at the history of the site and what it used to be.If you see it was a shady site and also has a shady incoming link profile I would avoid it. My guess would be that a lot of really good domain names (short, keyword rich names) were dropped because of penalties.

Dropped domains are not simply "reset" or owners would just let their penalized domain expire and pick it up again under a different name.

[Marcus_Miller]

I would agree that they are not simply 'reset' hence the need to take a look at the history but... I have seen plenty of discussion relating to this over the years that you will get no credit (good or bad) from an expired domain.

Personally, I would not hang my hat on a domain with a dodgy history but likewise, don't expect to get any positive credit from an expired domain with some OK links either.

If it seems clean, if it has no dodgy backlinks, if it has a safe history on archive.org etc - all of these can help you make a decision.

[PeterM22]

Great answers, Thanks Marcus and Irving

[Marcus_Miller]

Here is an interesting addition to this folks.

I am reviewing some backlinks on a new clients site and found loads of old blogroll links from foreign language sites. It would seem that these links were paid links as it went but as I dug in I found that in fact, this was a domain that had expired and that these links pointed to the old site.

Now, this domain was unregistered for a while, so it was not a case of dropping the domain and re registering under another name. In fact the site used to be for a Portuguese music band and now is something wildly different.

So, some thoughts on this.

1. tons of these links showed up in webmaster tools so were clearly being acknowledged and still assigned to the domain despite it's being dead for a good while

2. These links all ended up being for the brand of the new business as it matched the old band name but from wildly off topic sites in another language

It is my thought here, that in cases like this, where the domain was dead for a given period of time and the site is clearly not a rehash of the original site but a bricks and mortar business, in a totally different area, in another country that you should be able to use a domain like this even if it had a slightly dodgy past.

But, how would you go about this? Well, my thoughts would be a reconsideration request stating that you are the new owner and giving all the details.

I have nothing to back this up, but my thoughts would be that you should not be penalised here for the past history of a domain. Heck, if I moved into a house where someone was murdered, that does not make me a murderer.

I tried to find some evidence of this and found various mentions, much like the domain reset thing but not much hard evidence but Matt Cutts does detail this here on the back of his domain conference that if you buy a bad domain, then just submit a reconsideration request.

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/trip-report-domain-roundtable-conference/

With the manual review of the domain, it should be fairly easy to see if this is an attempt to shed some old weight or is just an honest acquisition by the 99% of the world that simply would not give the domains history a second thought.

Obviously, there are some caveats here and if the domain was doing something really nasty (porn etc) then it may not be worth it but we do have to balance up good domain with dodgy background vs really crappy domain sometimes so there are a lot of moving parts.

Anyhow, would be interesting to see if anyone has any experience here or thoughts on this.

Also, here is a post detailing how Matt Cutts states domains are reset but... there is little in the way of detail:

http://www.johnon.com/543/mattcutts-domainroundtable.html

Cheers

Marcus