Expired domains; do you buy if they have a dodgy "history"?

[canswift]

How closely do you check any expiring domains if you're buying them for re-sale, brandable or keyword?

I had checked out several names recently that looked great, with branding potential. However, one domain had previously been a porn site, another had been shut down by Homeland Security for selling counterfeit goods, and another had a really close match (one letter reversed) to an existing trademark.

I regretfully passed on all of them. Checking up later I found that all had been taken and were now for re-sale on a variety of marketplaces. Yikes, maybe I should have got them myself. So how carefully do you check expiring domains before buying for re-sale?

 

[Recons.Com]

If it was a porn site and it is archived at archive.org, you can contact them and ask to remove the whole history of the page. They'll take it off from their scanning/history.

 

[Area52]

I have a former porn site. New content should abolish any negativity as most people do not research that sort of thing.

 

[alcy]

those should be good for zero click parking
could pay themselves off in reg fee each year

 

[Ms Domainer]

In early days, I hand-registered a literary name domain of a long-dead writer; I later found out that the previous domain owner had been a pro-lifer and had posted photos of dead babies (Totally unrelated to the writer except that she had been a proto-feminist).

By that time, the site was up and running.

It doesn't seem to have suffered too much; it suffers more from my total inattention to it. It would be quite a nice academic site, and I may yet turn it over to someone who is passionate about the writer's work.