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I've heard people ask that question many times. And the answer has always been (from many people) "no. it's a non-issue". So I don't think you have to worry about it. Here is one thread on the subject (there are others if you Google for it): http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/8461.htm

It's a question of whether they still have the external links pointing to them, and how you handle those references. If you correctly 301 redirect all those old inbound links (which may point to subpages that no longer exist) then you will still get the link juice. If, however, all those inbound links result in 404 errors then you will not get the link juice from them.

If you buy an old domain where all the existing exeternal links point to the root then you should be good on the link juice. But if you have a situation where you're buying an old domain that had deep links (from the outside) that you're not going to maintain then you could lose a lot of juice.

Also, keep in mind that PR hasn't been updated in a long time. Impossible to know what it's current value us (mozRank is more up to date than Google toolbar PR).

Ok. Thanks.

Kind of related feature request: For off-page factors, like backlink profile, it would be nice if OSE grouped the anchor text of backlinks into categories to give you a rough % of these:

• exact match
• variations of exact match
• brand
• variations of brand
• url + variations of url
• random (click here, visit, etc)

So we could see at a glance (for a given keyword) if a page had an unnatural looking (over optimized) backlink profile.

You could also integrate this with your Report Card feature... in addition to giving a grade for on-page factors, it would be cool if it could give you a grade for off-page factors. If that's too hard then just put the functionality into OSE.... Thanks.

It used to be possible to use nofollow to redirect more juice to where you wanted it. But Google changed the algo so now that's not the case. See Rand's excellent pieces on it here: http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-maybe-changes-how-the-pagerank-algorithm-handles-nofollow and http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-says-yes-you-can-still-sculpt-pagerank-no-you-cant-do-it-with-nofollow

5C is the hex code for '' (backward slash). Maybe you have a backward slash where you mean to have a forward slash '/'? Ascii codes here: http://www.asciitable.com/

SEOmoz maintains a list of directories here: http://www.seomoz.org/directories

Query-dependent search results that redirect vs giving standard search results is kind of a confusing behavior for the user. If I'm the user then sometimes I get a typical search results page and sometimes I get a whole other look and feel for a category of results.

Instead, I would always give the search results in standard form (so all searches have the same behavior/results look/feel) and then, for certain queries that match categories you have add something above the search results that says "Looking for [query]? Here's our <query category="" page="">" or something where <> is a link to your dedicated category page. I think that's cleaner design for users and no redirects necessary.</query>

Can the seller provide you with historical Google Analytics data? If there is a sudden drop in traffic then the domain may have been penalized. Is there a visible site on the domain today? Does it rank for any phrases (should it? given the backlinks it has)? Maybe enter it in http://www.ispionage.com and then click on the SEO tab to see if it ranks for any phrases today. If it's on page 1 for anything then it is unlikely to be penalized.

Also, does it link out to any bad neighborhoods? Google cares more about what you link to than what links to you (in terms of giving you a penalty). If bad neighborhoods link to you then you won't get penalized but if you link to bad neighborhoods and Google identifies it as such then you will get penalized.

My understanding is that the 2nd and beyond links to the same url from the same page don't count (ie they are worth zero) and that their link juice does not get redistributed to the other links on the page. So it acts like the 2nd and beyond links to the same url are nofollow.

I don't know VB scripting but you could use a RewriteRule with a 301 redirect in your .htaccess file? You can redirect domain A traffic to a subfolder on domain B and by using 301 you'll pass all the juice. I'm not sure if your VB script response.Redirect is generating a 301 or not. If it is then you're probably not losing any juice.

So I think you are trying to redirect a query parameter request to your home page, right? So that this:

/m/imgres?q=short+holiday+treatments

is redirected to this:

/

Correct? If so, try this:

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^(.)short+holiday+treatments(.)$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /? [R=301,L]

Why don't you 301 redirect one of the sites to the other?

You may want to read this page before you go down that path (talks about redirecting one directory to another): http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3205094.htm

I might use something like this in an .htaccess file on the domain that you want to send to the other domain:

RewriteEngine on

RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301]

You can leave off the "%{REQUEST_URI}" part if you just want to send them to the home page of the new domain.