How much did you know about your website domain when you bought it? The reality is that it’s common to buy a domain that’s been used before. But with Google’s new spam policy targeting expired domain abuse, you might be wondering how to stay on the right side of the algorithms when you need to buy a domain for your business.
Whether you’re rebranding, acquiring a different TLD for your current brand (e.g. company.co.uk buying company.com) or setting up a new business – there are some quick checks that you can do on a domain to check its history and flag up if there are likely to be significant SEO issues with the domain.
How the land lies
Google’s ‘expired domain abuse’ spam policy was released alongside the March 2024 core update. It’s specifically targeted at sites where an expired domain, with historical backlinks and authority, is used to boost the performance of new content that’s low-quality, spammy or malicious.
This could include:
- Content completely unrelated to the original domain – for example, hosting a casino website on a domain previously used by a government agency.
- Content related to the original domain – Google gives the example of commercial medical products being sold on a website previously used by a non-profit medical charity.
- Harmful content like malware or a phishing scam.
The aim of the policy is to find and devalue sites which are manipulating search rankings through using an expired domain.
This appears to be a battle Google’s been fighting for some time. Back in the 2000’s, Matt Cutts from Google stated that expired domains wouldn’t pass the full benefits of backlinks to a new domain.
There are some domain transfers ( e.g. genuine purchases of companies) where it can make perfect sense for links to transfer. But at the same time it wouldn’t make sense to transfer the links from an expired or effectively expired domain, for example. Google (and probably all search engines) tries to handle links appropriately for domain transfers.
The sort of stuff our systems would be designed to detect would be things like someone trying to buy expired domains or buying domains just for links.
Matt Cutts
Quote taken from a Search Engine Land interview.
Given that this policy has been released a significant way down the line suggests that Google may not have completely got on top of this problem in the intervening years. There are plenty of SEO tactics around using expired domains to boost another site, some of which are in the black-hat SEO territory (SEO that goes against Google’s guidelines).
While I haven’t seen a lot of evidence of sites targeted by this policy so far, another spam policy released at the same time – scaled content abuse – has led to a lot of sites being slapped with a manual action and disappearing from search results pages.
How to use a new-to-you domain safely:
With that in mind, it’s worth being cautious how you incorporate any new-to-you domains into your business. You can do this by:
1. Being wary buying a domain purely for the perceived SEO benefits
If you’re thinking of buying an expired domain and redirecting it towards your main domain, it would be sensible to pause – at least until there’s some more information about how Google is targeting these sites in practice.
2. Run checks on any new-to-you domain before you associate it with your business
It’s not just expired domain abuse that can harm your SEO. Domains which have a negative past – e.g. having been previously used for spam or adult content – can have a negative effect on how your site ranks (whether you’re creating a new site on that domain, or interlinking it with existing sites you own). In the rest of this blog, we’ll go through some of the tools that can be used to run these checks.
3. Focus on creating helpful content
Once you know (as much as you can) that the domain you’re using doesn’t have a negative history, focus on creating helpful content on your website. The new spam policy is designed to target sites using expired domains to promote low-quality content. As part of the policy announcement, Google said that high-quality sites using a previously expired domain wouldn’t be hit. While we’re still waiting to see how it plays out in practice, focusing on helpful content is one of the best ways you can demonstrate that your website is a positive addition to the web.
How to check the history of a domain
Once you’ve chosen – or shortlisted – your potential domain names, it’s time to see what information you can find about their history.
Things that you’re looking out for include:
- Anything that suggests a manual action might be in place. This could include the domain being flagged up as spam or malicious in one of the checks, or showing up on a blacklist. While you can sometimes recover these domains, it’s often a long and expensive process to do so.
- Spammy, low-quality historical content on the website.
- Historical content on gambling, adult content, scams, fraud or any illegal activities that you wouldn’t want your business to be associated with.
- High levels of backlinks coming from sites linked to those topics.
6 tools to check a domain’s history
1. Google search
Google search is a quick way to check the off-site reputation of a domain or brand name. Replace ‘brand’ with your domain name, and use searches such as:
- brand.com -site:brand.com – shows up where the domain is mentioned online, but not on that domain
- brand -site:brand.com – shows where the brand name is mentioned other than on the domain
- Brand reviews -site:brand.com – pulls up off-site reviews
- Brand fraud -site:brand.com – you can also use searches such as ‘lawsuit’ etc. This pulls up potential news about illegal activities
If there are negative associations with the name, you need to take into account how much they’re likely to affect the business. The odd genuine negative review often doesn’t cause much harm – but a previous fraud conviction could potentially have a significant impact on how much Google trusts a brand name.
The example here shows some of the history of an expired domain, which was previously used as a Russian e-commerce marketplace.
2. Wayback Machine
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine lets you browse the historical content and design of a domain over time. It holds screenshots of billions of web pages – there are usually a few for each domain, although lower traffic websites tend to have fewer screenshots.
Once you search for your desired domain, you’ll see how many times Wayback Machine crawled the website. Then simply click on one of the dates and times to view the screenshot.
It’s worth checking a reasonable number of points throughout the available history as the domain may have had more than one previous owner. For lower traffic sites, the screenshots might be few and far between already. For higher traffic sites, checking a screenshot or two a year should help you quickly narrow down when the site has changed hands.
You’re looking for anything that looks obviously spammy, or links to topics such as gambling, adult content or crime which you’d want to keep your business away from.
Remember Ask Jeeves from 1997? Here’s how it looked back then…
3. Google Transparency Report
This quick tool from Google will flag up whether any unsafe content has been found on the website. While it’s designed to update regularly, if a website has been out of use for a while then you might be able to see the old data (I found a site reporting the most recent data from 2018). It’s not a fail safe, but for the few seconds it takes, it’s worth ruling out any problems.
4. Spamhaus
Spamhaus checks blocklists to see if a domain has previously been flagged for spam. Simply search for the domain, and if it doesn’t appear on any of Spamhaus’s lists, then you’ll get a message saying there are no issues.
5. Norton Safe Web
This tool shows Norton’s database of websites, and how it’s analysed them for safety and security. Search for a domain and you’ll see Norton’s analysis along with any community reviews that have been added for the site.
6. Semrush (or another tool to check backlinks)
Running the domain through an SEO tool like Semrush, Majestic or Ahrefs will give you some more information about the domain authority and the quantity and types of backlinks that are pointing at it.
Through this, you might be able to see particular patterns such as links flagged as being from a link network, what type of links exist – in terms of industries, geography etc – or whether there’s any spammy anchor text being flagged up.
This can give you a sense of what the previous owner has done with the site and is another potential indicator of reputation (based on anchor text and link quality).
And a bonus – Google Search Console
I’ve counted this one as a bonus, as it can only be done once you already own the domain! Once have access to the domain, you can add it to your Google Search Console account.
Under the ‘Security and Manual Actions’ tab, there are two reports which show up any existing manual actions attached to the site.
Hopefully running the checks above before purchase will mean that when you check in Google Search Console, you’ll see this message saying no issues have been detected! If there are associated manual actions, Search Console will highlight what they are and why they’ve been given to the site.
Using expired domains for your business
Sadly none of the checks above will tell you with 100% accuracy that a domain has never had negative associations. But they’re a good quick litmus test which can flag up major problems early on in the process. Most of them are really quick, so there’s no reason to not use them as part of your process whenever you bring a new domain into your business.
Looking for support to get more from your website? At HeyYou! Digital, we work with organisations across the East Midlands to support with search and content. We’d love to have a chat about whether we’re a good fit to work together. You can get in touch on 📨 hello@heyyou.digital or 📞 +44 (0)115 990 2779.
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