A domain name that has expired is so much like a used car. One can’t actually be certain who the past owner was and what they were doing with it before you arrived. Risking high repair bills is what you get with a used car and it is bad enough, a used domain name however can cost you more. A wrong domain name can cost you search engine rank, traffic and more importantly, propriety.
There are a number of perfectly harmless reasons why a domain owner failed to renew. It could be that they became too busy to keep the website up or they couldn’t afford it anymore. They might have lost interest or the business shut down. If these were the cases then it won’t give you problems. As a matter of fact, it could be to your advantage because you could inherit traffic to your site from previous visitors’ bookmark.
But what if the reason why owners relinquish their domain names is something deep and scary? What if their domain names have been permanently banned from the search sites as a spam site?
Spam sites are greatly detested my search engines. It pollutes search results, eat up storage space and irritate searchers. Aggressive steps are being taken by search engines to recognize spam sites and punish them. The nastiest offender gets the webs version of the death penalty: permanently banning the domain names from a search site’s index.
The domain now is of no value to a spammer when this happen. Ultimately he abandons the domain name. Before long, it will appear on lists of expired domain names and domain name registrar.
Then you come along. You eagerly register the domain name before anyone else does thinking that you found the name of your dreams. Fast-forward to a few weeks and your site design has been completed and you’re ready to launch.
Anxiously, after submitting your site to the top search engines and directories, you monitor your server logs for spider visits. But none appear, and neither do visitors. It seems dream name has become nightmare!
Unfortunately, there’s almost nothing you can do about this. Google’s wrath of banning a domain name as a spam site is permanent. It’s still possible to appeal the ban but this will take a lot of time, effort and money.
Don’t be too much in a hurry when you’re buying expired domains, take your time. Your identity online is worth at least as much research as what you will put in when your going buy a used car isn’t it?
Who used to own this domain name? Did he or she own just this domain or is it only one of the many? Be careful with owners who control a lot of domain names. They could be either speculators or spammers who interlink their sites so that they can boost link popularity in order to confuse search engine algorithms.
The solution to this problem of expired domains is to research and research some more before you buy. Not only should you research the previous owner, but you should check the WHOIS listing (www.whois.net), the Domain Name Server Blacklist or the DNSLB which recognizes addresses that are identified as spammers and most importantly, check the Wayback Machine Internet Archive (www.archive.org).
A lot of questions will be answered after your visit to the wayback machine. Questions such as: if the domain name actually had a site or was it just bought speculatively? What was the nature of its online business? And did the site rank high in the search engines?
If the domain that you are interested in buying was recently released, the previous site information should still be there in the search engine directories.
You owe it to yourself to learn about the facts before you buy expired domains. This acquisition is so much more important than a car. This is your business and it’s essential to your future success.
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