advice Buying a pre-owned domain name? Check these 10 things first

[News]

With over 1 billion websites on the World Wide Web today, it comes as no surprise that the domain name you may want to use is already owned by someone else. Luckily, in some cases, the current owner might be willing to part with it — for the right price.

Acquiring a pre-owned domain can have a drastic impact on your SEO efforts, so it is important to approach such a purchase with caution. It is recommended that you do your due diligence — it’s not uncommon for a domain name to have changed hands many times, and just like buying a used car, it’s often difficult to get the full history.

Domain Authority (DA), a proprietary metric coined by Moz, aims to predict the “ranking potential” of your website. In an ideal world, the site you are looking to migrate to would have a higher Domain Authority than your current site. The higher the Domain Authority, the more likely you are to appear in the SERPs.

Once you’ve completed these 10 checks and resolved any issues, you should feel confident to proceed with your domain migration...

Read More

 

[Addison]

Over 1 billion websites? There are only 331.9 million domain name registrations.

That would mean, on average, there are about 4 websites on every domain name. Domainers know that most registered domains are not developed (they're parked or do not resolve).

IMO, I call bull on there being that many websites.

 

[Kpett]

@Addison - if you click on the link, you would read "By "Website" we mean unique hostname (a name which can be resolved, using a name server, into an IP Address)." and "It must be noted that around 75% of websites today are not active, but parked domains or similar."

The article probably could have been better to quote the 331 million domain names ...

 

[UXela]

Unfortunately - from the SEO point of view - the article is mostly BS.
...which is sad because it looks like its main purpose was to give SEO advice...
The only more or less valid point is the link manipulation part. If the domain was used with that ... kind of a bummer.
But to mention old site page speed when it gets overwritten on the first crawl with major change detected ... oh c'mon...

 

[Addison]

@Addison - if you click on the link, you would read "By "Website" we mean unique hostname (a name which can be resolved, using a name server, into an IP Address)." and "It must be noted that around 75% of websites today are not active, but parked domains or similar."

Thank you.

By "Website" we mean unique hostname

I enthusiastically disagree with redefining a widespread word like website to mean hostname.

 

[Kate]

Over 1 billion websites? There are only 331.9 million domain name registrations.

It's possible with subdomains, because each subdomain can be a standalone website. For example there are many sites (blogs) under blogger.com etc.
But I don't know NetCraft's methodology.
And a parked domain name would also count as a website I guess, why not that's what it is.