Top Suggestions of Google’s Matt Cutts to Evade Buying a Bad Domain
Investing in a fresh new domain can be at times daunting, particularly at that point when you have no idea if there is linked a bad history with the domain & Google as well.
Many people buy a domain just to find out it’s been ostensibly permanently penalized by Google for its implementation of black hat SEO tactics, then need to put up a fight all through hoops to attest it’s all cleaned up & send a re-examination request. Well, it becomes fuzzier when people not just invest in a domain name but the content as well.
In a recent webmaster he
lp video, Matt Cutts of Google pointed out some considerations before acquiring a domain to avert ranking issues later.
According to him, people should kick off their domain purchasing venture with a site search in Google. If the search of that particular domain name doesn’t show up any results, or if there is no content on that, it is quite a bad sign. If the domain planted, Google tries to include domains out of the results anyway so it might not show anything. However if you opt for site search, and see no or nil results, it’s time and again a bad sign.
Those buying a new domain can also perform a site search in Bing as well, so as to get a better idea. Apparently if a site is being shown in Bing but not in Google, it is a major red flag. However, they can still do a site search over there in Bing and hook up usual spam keyword and observe what comes out.
Matt Cutts suggests to just searching for the domain name, or the name of the domain without .com or anything that is in extension. This will give an idea of the reputation of that domain.
Again people need to do a meticulous serch on both Bing and Google, in that situation when they are searching for things like spam comments.
Another rule of thumb is to apply the Internet Archive. By going to archive.org and putting the domain name, potential domain buyers will come across the previous versions of a site’s look like. If the version shows that the site was spamming, then it’s obvious to turn up from buying that domain as it may require a lot of efforts to put the domain on level ground.
Some sellers familiar with technical tactics will disable access to archive.org by just placing it in the robots.txt, so in a few cases it can be hazardous if the seller is blocking previous content from archive.
While buying a domain from someone who recently owns it, it would be a plus point if you ask to see the Webmaster Tool console or analytics to check for fresh messages, screenshots or something to keep an eye on traffic over time as if the traffic is OK and plunged a lot or has gone down, it might be a good reason to turn up.
Don’t buy a domain without knowing the history as it may prove to be quite dicey.
If you are going with the same domain despite all odds, do a reconsideration request, but before that disavow all the links that you find on the domain name.