The Risks of Buying Expired Domains

Buying expired domains can be a smart, but risky business decision.

Every domain name on the Internet is registered. While it is easy to buy a domain name, many people find it harder to maintain the domain and associated website content for an extended period of time. This is why many original owners fail to renew the name, causing the domain to expire and become available again at auction.

This is fairly common, which means there are a multitude of expired domains that are now available for others to buy. For savvy web developers, expired domain names can be quite tempting.

Although expired domains may no longer be active, they still have a lot of worth when used correctly. After all, the domain may have a high PageRank (PR) or a lot of backlinks. Both of these things are hard to develop from the ground up, so buying an expired domain name with these elements already in place can give developers a leg up on the competition.

It is easy to purchase expired domain names by using auction sites like godaddy.com or SnapNames.com. In these cases, users can simply search for their desired domain name and place a bid. It is recommended to buy expired domains as soon as they become available, because competition for good expired domain names is often quite heated. However, there are some caveats to this practice. Before making such a purchase, be sure to consider all the associated risks.

Bad Neighborhood Backlinks?

Many people are attracted to expired domains because of the backlinking that has already been established with the site. Backlinks are an excellent means of building a strong online presence, and many startup domains have to put a lot of time and money into developing a quality backlinking campaign to increase traffic. However, while it is easy to see how many backlinks a domain name may have, it is not always obvious whether or not those links are worthwhile. High quality links can make a real difference in site traffic, but low quality links may actually even hurt your website. Low quality links are often irrelevant sites linking back to yours or established on link farms, which are essentially spam sites that real web users avoid. Therefore, when looking at backlinks, remember that the quality of the backlinks trumps the quantity.

Was the Website Penalized?

Moreover, when a domain name is involved in questionable backlinking and other dubious practices, there are repercussions. In some cases, such tactics cause the domain name to get banned or penalized by Google. A banned domain name means that even if the content is updated, it still will not appear in a Google search, which makes the website effectively useless.  You can do a quick check to see if the url was banned from Google by typing “site:domainurl ” in the Google search bar and see if Google has it indexed.  If nothing is there, the website may have been banned.  Obviously this method only applies if the domain name was actually hosting website content in the past – which is why you want the name in the first place.

It can be difficult to see if an expired domain name has been penalized or has had any manual actions placed against it if you’re not the current owner.  A sure way of knowing is by getting access to Google Webmaster Tools and checking for penalties that way.  You will most likely have to get the domain name owners permission to get access to this information.  Once you do, simply go to the domain name in Webmaster Tools.  Click “Search Traffic” and then click “Manual Actions.”  You’re in good shape if it says “No manual webspam actions found.”

Real PageRank?

You should always verify the real PageRank. Although Google tells us not to place too much importance on PR, the rule of thumb is that the higher the domain PR, the more valuable it is and the more it will cost at auction.

Shady webmasters know that domains with a high PR will sell better than lower ones, so they may spoof the ranking.  One such method is HTTP 302 redirecting Google bots to a higher page rank website.  To the user, the PR displayed is that of the website you’re on.  But Google is actually displaying the PR to the redirected website.  Scammers can easily fool the naive into thinking a new domain name with zero backlinks is a PR6.

The naive will purchase the spoofed high PR website thinking they just bought a gem.  However, when the domain name shifts ownership to you, those redirects are lost, and the real PR will be revealed.  A good way to avoid this is by typing in info:domainurl into the Google search bar to see if the  domain had a redirect to another url.  If it has, don’t buy it.

Useable Content?

Additionally, it is important to understand that buying an expired domain name does not necessarily grant you access to the previous content on the site. The content, whether it is high quality or not, is not part of the purchase agreement. Even if the previous content can be retrieved through Internet archives, you run into a couple of risks if you re-post it into the domain name you just purchased.  Here are some things to be aware of:

1.  Was the content unique?  Make sure the content wasn’t previously copied from another url.

2.  Did the original owner 301 redirect the content to a different site?  If so, you run the risk of having duplicate content on the net.

3.  Did you receive approval from the author?  The content may be copyrighted.  Make sure you get permission before publishing somebody else’s work.  Even if it was restored from internet archives.

Ultimately, buying expired domains name can be a smart move. However, before making the investment, it is important to do the appropriate research first in order to avoid any potential pitfalls.