I then use Firefox with the SEOQuake toolbar to check the backlinks, whois.net and archive.org information. You can also check the Google cache if it is still there. I use Yahoo to do a link:www.domain.??? to see any backlinks that are still indexed. I use yahoo as they will show all backlinks, not like Googles picky backlink listings.

If all looks legit and the site is a good match for an eBay category and keyword niche, then I’ll get it.

Once I “own” the domain, I use Google webmaster tools to verify site ownership, set the prefered domain (www or not), submit a sitemap and I have on a couple sent a reinclusion request just in case. It never hurts to go ahead and send them one.

You can also check and have certain pages removed from Google if you want in the webmaster tools section.

Hope that helps a little, it’s a lot of information to try and get ahold of…

I have been reading the blog from the beginning of the “12 Week Empire” series started and this is my first contribution. I have been aware of the risk involved in buying a domain name for a few years now so this is no surprise to me.

And yes I said “the risk involved in buying a domain name” not just expired domains. This is because as Rochelle pointed out any domain we rent (as we don’t actually buy the domain) can very easily be an expired domain.

Rochelle asked “should we check every single URL we are considering purchasing to see if it was expired?”. To which I would say ABSOLUTLY! I personally check every domain I am considering getting. Well ok 90% of them as there are some that are just so good that quite frankly I don’t care if they came from a bad neighborhood or not.

What I do to check a domain is to first run site:domain-name on the big 3 search engines as well as Alexa. Depending on what shows there I will then check the domain at Archive.org and see if they have the site listed in their database and if so I will look to see how old the domain is and what type of site was previously on it.

Hope that helps some,
~Jeff C.

It’s good to see ebay finally taking action re epn reporting. The grapevine suggests this could be a bigger problem than they’re currently admitting to though.

Thank you Mark for highlighting this issue. From now on I’ll be more careful about the domains I use for my sites.

p.s. I love this site, you’re doing a great job!

Paul.

Interestingly, today I found out that one of my URLs was expired and I never knew it before buying it. I thought I came up with the domain name on my own. Turns out there was a business with the name of the URL I bought and they had previously owned this URL but let it expire.

I found out by looking at my stats and saw a visitor came from a site that had a backlink to my site. I checked it out and saw it was a directory of sites and this company still has this link connected to their name.

I’ve actually got about five URLs that were expired and I never knew it. I set up Google Alerts for all my domains and every now and then get an alert for one of the sites showing that the URL was expired. Just about every expired URL I have was expired for several months before I bought them (thinking I was the first to think of whatever their URLs are).

So, my question now is, should we check every single URL we are considering purchasing to see if it was expired? If so, how much research should we put into it?

Rochelle

———————-
For Example:
It appears that the site was also a purchased website with tons of useless blackhat backlinks. Backlinks come from porno sites, illegal crack sites, and foreign sites.

Google’s cache tells a much different story. How long has it been since it was switched over from a BANS site from naked girls, Rapidshare , megaupload links – freeware and shareware applications.
————-

Even the eBay Rep referenced the quotes made by the other eBay affiliates that mentioned those Poor Quality traffic sources. I don’t know if it’s the traffic that caused the problem – I think it’s the content and information on the site that was using the Spam and Nudity that was the cause.

But you can always test the domain with domain parking before developing it. Just another monster in the closet to look out for when developing old expired domains.

Another no no is having iTunes affiliate links on a iPod site.