news Expired Domains With Backlinks Lose Value

[silentg]

Expired domain abuse​

Occasionally, expired domains are purchased and repurposed with the primary intention of boosting search ranking of low-quality or unoriginal content. This can mislead users into thinking the new content is part of the older site, which may not be the case. Expired domains that are purchased and repurposed with the intention of boosting the search ranking of low-quality content are now considered spam.

https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-march-2024/

 

[domain hacks]

They said exactly the same thing back in 2021 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/expired-domains-and-google/428522/

 

[Jannes]

I have a policy to never believe a word Google says.

 

[pb]

Google results become less and less usable, not to mention trustworthy, let's see if they manage to reverse the trend and (I assume) user outflow. Personally I started looking for a new default search engine last week, first time since switching from AltaVista to Google.

 

[NickB]

They said exactly the same thing back in 2021 https://www.searchenginejournal.com/expired-domains-and-google/428522/

They did not explicitly say back then that Google was going to be targeting expired domains that were rebuilt and had poor content on them.....

In this update they are saying "Expired domains that are purchased and repurposed with the intention of boosting the search ranking of low-quality content are now considered spam"

 

[Acroplex]

Basically, it's black hat SEO: You buy a dropped domain with backlinks from eg Wikipedia. Then, you set up a web site with this domain but you exploit the backlink traffic and set up a bunch of affiliate id or other ad-linking content that has nothing to do with the original content it ranked for.

 

[Future Sensors]

Also: https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2024/03/core-update-spam-policies

 

[LOLed]

Do they mean expired and deleted domains, or just expired? If latter, how would they identify that the domain had expired and repurposed, because the registration date doesn't change, and unless there's a significant change in the content, it looks like any other domain transaction?

 

[Future Sensors]

Do they mean expired and deleted domains, or just expired? If latter, how would they identify that the domain had expired and repurposed, because the registration date doesn't change, and unless there's a significant change in the content, it looks like any other domain transaction?

Tools like these will detect it:

https://www.domaintools.com/products/threat-intelligence-feeds/domain-visibility/farsight-nad/

 

[NickB]

There's a bit of a bloodbath going on - been reading a lot of sites on expired domains have been getting deindexed from Google, manual penalties flooding in and it's only the beginning of the update......

This will be a lot of shite spam sites so no big loss, but a lot of people who don't have spam sites have seen their traffic drop

My site (using an expired domain) is looking decent, traffic looks to be on the up - hopefully this sticks throughout the update

 

[Jannes]

This domain was acquired not only due to its name but also backlinks:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/anxiety-org-sold-for-100-000-dave-evanson-from-sedo.1306212/

This is what it was acquired for (OP is deleted but you get the idea):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/comments/17av9au/anxietyorg_plagiarizes_content_and_possibly_uses

And now it's been deindexed.
(This case was reported in comments on SERoundtable)

 

[bmugford]

This makes sense.

A lot of these expired domains with backlinks, pagerank, etc. are being used to rank for unrelated or garbage content.

They can also be used for other shady things, like resurrecting websites by taking previous content that the domain owner has no right to use.

Brad

 

[pb]

A lot of these expired domains with backlinks, pagerank, etc. are being used to rank for unrelated or garbage content.

They can also be used for other shady things, like resurrecting websites by taking previous content that the domain owner has no right to use.

That's all true, let's just hope google won't just throw all expired domains into the same bag and out of the window. What if someone buys or registers an expired exact-match domain (EMD) and builds an entirely new site on the subject?

 

[NickB]

That's all true, let's just hope google won't just throw all expired domains into the same bag and out of the window. What if someone buys or registers an expired exact-match domain (EMD) and builds an entirely new site on the subject?

I think as long as the content is still relevant to the niche and along the same lines as the old content it should be OK

As Brad mentioned, as long as you are not putting completely irrelevant content on it or tonnes of Ai spam it should rank....

Think there will be a lot of trail and error going on to see how far people can push it and black hatters always find loopholes.....eventually

 

[silentg]

Google made a deal with Reddit for their content. Now the complaint on X has been that they're favouring Reddit in search results.

They also started to manually penalizing sites with spam content.

 

[pb]

I re-read the blog post and it says explicitly "It's fine to use an old domain name for a new, original site that's designed to serve people first.", hopefully they will stick to that assurance. However it's all automated so we'll just have to wait and see how it works (or doesn't).

 

[GoKaizen]

This post inspired an article. @Acroplex

https://domaingang.com/domain-news/anxiety-org-now-deindexed-by-google-after-100k-sale/

This domain was acquired not only due to its name but also backlinks:

https://www.namepros.com/threads/anxiety-org-sold-for-100-000-dave-evanson-from-sedo.1306212/

This is what it was acquired for (OP is deleted but you get the idea):

https://www.reddit.com/r/Blogging/comments/17av9au/anxietyorg_plagiarizes_content_and_possibly_uses

And now it's been deindexed.
(This case was reported in comments on SERoundtable)