Why Domain Sellers should sanitize their Sold threads

[Name Trader]

Why do I ask you to PM me before closing a Sales Thread I won on NamePros.

All NamePros forums are searched by Google. So Google is putting every thread into their Cache. This Google Cache can be stored for months/years. If I am selling this domain to a buyer. They are very likely to do a Google Search for the "domainname.com" (in parentheses) to see what comes up. I know I do this search for every domain I buy. Don't you? The problem comes when we are middle of negotiations, and they do a Google Search, and find out I bought the domain for $xx, but I'm asking $xk for the domain. Relations go south quite quicky after that. And it makes it much harder to sell the domain to that buyer.

The solution to this is to "sanitize" the Sales Thread before you close the thread. It's just easier for the seller to do this BEFORE they close the thread. Than for me to to ask you to re-open the thread, make the changes, and then close the thread again. So what do I mean by "sanitize". I mean you should change the Original Title of the thread to the word "CLOSED" (without the parentheses) and to change the entire contents of the Original Post also to the the word "CLOSED". But it shouldn't stop there. The seller should also santize every post they have made in the thread, which mentions the domain name, or the price, or the winner, by replacing the whole post with ".." (two dots).

You might ask:

1) What about the other bidders posts? There is only so much we can do as just the buyer and the seller. It's unreasonable to ask every bidder to sanitize their posts.

2) What if it's a multiple domain auction and there still other domains being offered? Then you should sanitize the domain name(s) which have been sold by (a) Removing them from the Thread Title, and (b) by removing the domain from your original post. By removal, I mean complete removal of the domain name. Because that is better, and even easier to do, than trying to obfuscate the domain name. And, of course, to sanitize any other posts related to that domain in your thread, where you have mentioned the domain name, the price, or the winner, with ".." (two dots).

Why am I posting this proposal:

To be quite honest. I think the sellers of domains on NamePros are only interested in selling their domains, and generally don't care what happens to the domains afterwards. Whereas, the buyers, have a keen interest on what happens after the sale. They don't want Google's Cache, to store these transactions in perpetuity. They don't want to deal with cases like I described above. I think for any seller, although voluntary, they should be following their auctions enough to sanitize their posts of their sold domain names, before they close their threads. It is an obvious goodwill gesture to the buyer.

I've posted this thread in the Beginners Forum, where everybody can reach it. I will also post a link in the Insiders Lounge. So that this will reach as wide a possible range in our community, beginners and experts alike. This is a problem throughout our community. IMHO.

 

[DotKing]

I don't think that would work. Because the open thread would still be in the Google's Cache. If I remember how this works, correctly?

Well, pages are not in Google cache (google cache is different thing and it lasts much shorter), but they are indexed, like forever. That's the problem. I said what @Randolph said - make closed marketplace posts (or every marketplace post) hidden to Google by blocking them with 'noindex' or any other technique. This is very easy to achieve and no more SERPs from marketplace.
If they are not indexed, they cannot be cached either

 

[Randolph]

Take no offense, stub. I agree with you that this is terrible for the business aspect here and something needs to be done. I won't sell a majority of my domains here because of this sole factor. I'm sure there's hundreds of others that feel the same way.

I understand NP wanting to keep the links in the search engines and gain as much juice as they can. Fact of the matter is it's gross negligence to leave these in the engines. They would gain more activity from the users that fear posting in it's current status.

It comes down to the fact that keeping these threads/sections visible to the search engines actually HARMS their rankings. The threads contain absolutely no valuable content for the engines. Threads often contain the same wording as a large number of the others. They also contain mostly links. These are all penalties in Google's algorithm (last I know of).

If they want to keep the "juice" they're expecting, an additional, optional, block can be added to posts that won't be picked up by search engines. Leaving all other content and the thread itself within the search engine. Domain names within the special block would not show up in snippets of search results.

 

[xynames]

Additional suggestion for NP : completely delete all closed marketplace thread with certain timerange (such as 1 year before), put redirection to all of them to a single landingpage, NP could sell advertisement on the landingpage. By deleting those thread it will help clean up database and perhaps could save some hosting cost...

SEO wise it's not a good idea to delete threads from your forum after they have existed for a while. It's sometimes not even a good idea, again just speaking SEO wise, to merge threads. Some of the most unorganized forums with multiple threads with similar topics have the highest SEO rating, often higher than a forum where the moderators are constantly moving and merging threads.

 

[IMEZI]

SEO wise it's not a good idea to delete threads from your forum after they have existed for a while. It's sometimes not even a good idea, again just speaking SEO wise, to merge threads. Some of the most unorganized forums with multiple threads with similar topics have the highest SEO rating, often higher than a forum where the moderators are constantly moving and merging threads.

Sales (auction/marketplace) thread were come and go every single day, the only purpose of the marketplace thread were only for selling domain names, once the domain name sold the purpose of the thread were fulfilled then we should properly ending it. Dont forget the sales thread were lack of content, the only thing unique on these thread were the domain name.

It would be different if we talk about discussion thread where member pouring their idea into post/reply, it will worth enough for SEO because of the rich content.

 

[EZPZYO]

Here's a handy tool.

Remove outdated content tool By Google
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7041154

 

[poweredbyme]

Marketplace section must be private. But it's a decision of the owner of this forum and I think it will not happen. Because forums make money from user generated content. Less content to be monetized = less money to be made.

Making marketplace section private should raise number of registered users as people will have to be logged in to read private marketplace section. More users may not be more profitable if more users don't improve the content quality and quantity on public sections. More content (regardless of public or private content) raise hosting and editorial costs of a forum. Nothing is free.

 

[Isac]

You are on point stub

 

[iAchilles]

Nice idea in theory but impossible in practice. Take an auction with multiple names, users are going to quote the name when bidding.

This is on Namepros to sort out. Last time this issue cropped up if I recall it was SEO and 401s that were the concern. I would argue that auction threads are low value content so all sales threads should be no indexed from crawlers.

 

[polymorph]

@iAchilles

It is possible if we all bid like this:
Ba////x.com $7
S----c.net $36

I already saw some users sanitize the names initially. Looks like we should all adopt it as a good practice or require it in the auction's rules until NamePros completely hide the sales section from bots.

 

[Andrew Knox]

+1 for making marketplace private/for logged in members only

 

[golan]

It is possible if we all bid like this:
Ba////x.com $7
S----c.net $36

In my multi domain listings, i always number the domains and ask to post bids on numbers, not on names. Like, " # 17 Sold " .

 

[Niraj Kumar]

or seller & buyer can do just one thing remove the price point once sold.