How to know the real history of a domain

[SharewarePros]

Dear mates,

I'm looking for register a new domain, and I'm looking for its history on http://web.archive.org/, my question is how to know if this domain has been penalized by Google, banned etc?.

Please let me know your ideas.

Thank you

Claudio

[Vizergy]

When you checked it in the way back machine did you see any on page issues on the old website that make you scared?

Can you run it through open site explorer or AHREFS to see what websites might still be linking to it?

Is there any content associated with the domain now?

[SharewarePros]

I'm deciding to open a new fresh site, so I'm looking for history of different domains (which are available), I was testing some of them in OpenSiteExp and no one link is pointing, also http://web.archive.org/ report pages (few) on Apr/2009 and from this point the domain is unregistered, I'm worry about register a penalized domain.

PS.: I check these domains in WOT and seems to be clear (no reputation at this time).

Do you recommends any tool to check it?

Thank you

Claudio

[Vizergy]

If the domain has remained unregistered for five years I don't think you need to be concerned about any lingering penalties.  I feel confident that you will be fine, just get great content associated with it, earn some good links, promote it through social media and BAM.  You are all good.

[MikeRoberts]

Here's a some info from Matt Cutts on a similar situation someone had back in December that may help to allay some of your worries about a penalty persisting from a long unregistered domain.

http://www.seroundtable.com/google-old-penalties-expired-domain-17883.html

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/H9-kbSf8r4w/discussion

[johnny122]

Nice links.

Personal experience: I had a manual penalty on a "MFA" domain for unnatural links. I did not renew it on time and he has been offline for few days. When he came back online, there was no manual penalty in GWT anymore.

So, if only few days offline can waive a penalty, I would be very confident for a domain offline several years.

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Claudio, you've received some great tips here. Did any responses help answer your question? If so, please mark them as "good answers". Either way, we'd love an update. Thanks!

Christy