Checking for Penalties attached to Expired Domains

[shags38]

What is the best method or procedures for checking whether an expired domain has any penalties attached to it, whether they be manual spam penalties or algorithm penalties?

Thanks in advance, Mike

 

[Simon Johnson]

Mike,

It depends on how far you want to go in terms of due diligence. You can do a few basic (free) things like:

1. Is the domain is indexed (or sandboxed)
2. Check content of previous pages (archive.org).

In terms of more advanced techniques, we created a few services for this specific purpose:

1. IP Reputation (spam and malware checks)

You can see some screen captures and details here:
http://www.ipneighborhood.com/intelligence/ip-reputation/

2. Expired Domains

These are tricky and the data is very hard to get (comes in waves as blogs/ppc farms die off).

Purpose Column - Shows you if a blog or PPC page was used.

Fake PR and Alexa checks highlighted in red.

http://www.ipneighborhood.com/domain-names/expired-domains/

Hope this helps.

- Simon

 

[James]

1. Check if the domain is still indexed in Google.
Use - site:www.website.com
2. Check the websites backlink profile in Ahrefs or OSE if it looks very dodgy it could be a warning sign.
3. Search for the domain in Google is another one you can do, people sometimes ask why a domain is banned in Google product forums.
4. If the expired domain holds links, run the profile on link research tools.

 

[shags38]

Thanks Simon and James - great information. I appreciate it is difficult - I am trying to avoid doing a lot of work in developing a domain to then do what Google WMT and forum FAQ's suggest - submitting a reconsideration request 'if it was a dropped domain not doing well in SERP's in case it had a manual spam penalty' - easy enough to do I suppose but it can only come after the hard work is done.

Was just looking for a reliable shortcut

I will check out the things you both advised - again thanks for the useful information.

regards, Mike

I was kinda hoping that any penalties attached to a domain would be expunged and the slate wiped clean once it expired but that doesn't seem to be the case.

 

[James]

Thanks Simon and James - great information. I appreciate it is difficult - I am trying to avoid doing a lot of work in developing a domain to then do what Google WMT and forum FAQ's suggest - submitting a reconsideration request 'if it was a dropped domain not doing well in SERP's in case it had a manual spam penalty' - easy enough to do I suppose but it can only come after the hard work is done.

Was just looking for a reliable shortcut

I will check out the things you both advised - again thanks for the useful information.

regards, Mike

I was kinda hoping that any penalties attached to a domain would be expunged and the slate wiped clean once it expired but that doesn't seem to be the case.

If it is a fresh domain you have no chance of an instant clean slate, yet if the domain is several years old it may be possible. Refer to the information here - http://www.seroundtable.com/google-old-penalties-expired-domain-17883.html