For years webmasters have been purchasing expired domains with average to good PageRank in hopes of using them to boost their network of sites. It just makes sense, buy the domain, and either 301 the expired domain to your main site or build a new site and capture all the links the previous owner had. You think “Cool, instant links for me.” The problem is, it doesn’t always work out that way.

Most webmasters who register expired domains report an initial “push” of their rankings, but then suffer a “let down” days or weeks later as their rankings fall back around their original positions. What causes this? There has been a rumor going around the SEO space for a few years now that Google resets the link counts when domain ownership changes. That’s just not true. From my test results, it isn’t the “expired” domain that is the problem, it is the time “out of Google’s index” that seems to be the issue.

This is why it is vital for your sites to remain in Google’s index, or you risk having them be “reset” as a brand new domain. According to my testing, domains which are out of Google’s index for more than five weeks run a great risk of being “reset.”

Let’s summarize suggestions make by Matt Cutts on the topic of expired / typo domains:

- expired domains are best 301′d to your main domain
- “typo” domains should be 301′d to your main domain
- buying expired domains for link juice rarely are effective, as their link profile is reset
- don’t purchase or register typo domains of competitors

The rumors that Google has a system in place to detect real expired domains (a company forgetting to renew a domain) vs. expired domains purchased for the link value is a little over the top for me. I don’t believe they have such a system in place as knowing the “intent” is more human ability than machine ability.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 7:29 am and is filed under Google, Webmaster. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.