Long gone are the days when you find a domain name from the list of expired and dropped domains that you like, and go through the purchasing process to buy it. The reason you liked that name was because it matched your business name, it reminded you of your favorite location, your first high school crush or it just sounded kinda cool..Nowadays though in the post Penguin/ Panda era there is so much more to be think about and consider it makes buying an expired domain a very scientific process and that is not with standing navigating your way around the auction and catch drop process. But does it really have to be this way..?

Firstly for those of you who don’t know why on earth I am referencing a large bird that cannot fly and lives at the North Pole and an even larger bear from China that is an endangered species I will explain.. Back in February 2011 Google launched a series of updates to their Search algorithms and the code name for these was “Panda”. The main driver for these updates was to improve user experience, Google had started to realize more and more people were taking advantage of their existing algorithms and employing black hat techniques to gain PageRank and higher search results.

The aim of Panda was to get back to get back to their core business which was all about returning search results that were relevant to search terms and delivered websites with rich and  and dynamic content. The update just over a year later in April 2012 and was code named “Penguin” took this direction from Google a step further and has become an extremely hot topic  when assessing the viability and indeed the value of an expired domain.

Penguin was and still is apparently all about link bombing…. The internet is an infinitely complex web of websites with an even more delicate and intricate sub layer connecting all these sites together.. It is this sublayer that Penguin targets.. Google had long regarded websites with many links from and to other websites as they had felt this was an endorsement of the quality of the site much like we see today from Social media with retweeting and favoriting of stories on Twitter and shares on Facebook – the concept for Google was the same. That was until they started to realize many people had discovered this was a core of part of their algorithms and started selling linkage to sites or people just bought up loads of cheap expired domains, parked them and put links on these sites directing them to domain they wanted to monetize…

So really that is where we are today – we have had another updated called “Hummingbird” but that is not so relevant to the value or the longevity of an expired domain though, and you may even be asking yourself why does any of this matter anyway I will buy my domain and follow Google’s guidelines and I will not fall into these traps and get penalized..

Well the simple answer is that domain names carry history, if the previous owner had employed some dubious blackhat techniques and you have many backlinks from other sites linking to your newly purchased expired domain this may become problematic for you once your website is up and running and you are trying to gain PageRank and rank higher in search. Beware removing backlinks is just about as difficult as putting them in as well!

So for those of you asking why on earth do domain search engines like ours http://www.expired-domains.co show number of backlinks as an indicator of value or in the very least as a demonstration of an established domain the answer is nothing less than it is a fine line….. Google still loves backlinks just as much as they now hate them. They stand behind their initial philosophy that good quality back links from and to relevant websites are the highest validator of a websites relevance to the specific subject and therefore should be rewarded with higher Search results. Penguin has now just got very good at rooting out the domains which have linked bombed and are nothing short of parking sites and is ensuring they do not rank as high as legitimate sites in search.

To ensure you do not fall into this trap when buying an expired domain make sure you check out carefully the Whois data before making any rash decisions, go to Alexa and check out the sites that have linked to the expired domain you are interested in and remember, remember with Google quality outranks quantity…They will always find you….

For the full list of expired, expiring and dropped domains go to http://www.expired-domains.co a unique search engine tha is easy to use and better still completley free, updated daily with no subscription is necessary.

Clare Coggins

clare@expired-domains.co