7 Ways To Maximise Checking Domain Name Availability With Expired Domains

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 6:33 pm

So you are in the market for purchasing domain names so you can make your first million (or two) on the internet.

Before you rush out and register that shiny new domain I am going to suggest that you consider purchasing an existing aged domain.

An aged/expired domain is a domain that has been previously registered by someone else, and that person or company has, for whatever reason decided not to renew it.

Sometimes the reason is simply that they forget. There was a famous story a few years ago when a very valuable domain passport.com owned by Bill Gate’s Microsoft was accidentally overlooked when it came time to renew the registration, meaning it became available for anyone to re-register.

A person did just that with this domain, but luckily for Microsoft this guy did the right thing and gave it back to them (I think Microsoft paid him back the registration fee).

Other reasons for not renewing a domain might be that the person that owned the domain went out of business, or they maybe transferred the business that used to operate on that domain to another person. In fact there are a multitude of reasons why domain names do get forgotten about.

So what are the advantages for you re-registering an aged domain?

1. Links – Most domains, particularly those domains that have been promoted heavily in the past and not just left idle have other sites linking to them over time, and these backlinks form a vital part in determining how well the site will rank in the search engines for particular keywords.

2. Page Rank – As a result of these links, a lot of these expired domains will have existing page rank.

3. Age – As a general rule the search engines give more authority to domains that have been continuously registered for a longer than other domains.

4. Visitors – Many domains will have existing traffic, with visitors arriving to that domain on a regular basis, often as a result of previous promotions completed by the previous web site owner.

5. No Sandbox – New domains are sometimes placed in a “sandbox” where they will not get as much traffic as older domains until they have being around long enough to be trusted by the search engines.

These are really the most attractive factors to consider when re-registering an expired domain versus registering a brand new domain.

There is an important distinction I recommend you become familiar with between an aged/expired domain and a deleted domain.

An aged or expired domain name has the existing age kept. For example if I registered a domain three years ago and then did not renew the registration and you come along and re-register it, then for all intensive purposes the domain is still three years old and gets all the advantages of that age in the search engines.

If however, you re-register a deleted domain, then for all intensive purposes you have registered a BRAND NEW domain. You will still be able to take advantage of any links, page rank, and traffic, but your domain may be fall foul of the sandbox, and WILL be treated as a brand new domain by the search engines.

So the key is to make sure you get the domain before it is deleted by the domain registrar. There are a number of free services available that you can use to search for aged domains or expired domains.

Just do a search in google for terms such as aged domain finder or something similar.

These websites will often allow you to search for domains and return information about the age of the domain, existing page rank, number of links, traffic, and even allow you to use the wayback machine (a catalog of all web pages at various points in time) to see what content was on the domain in the past.

Some of the better services will allow you to search with keywords as well which is a very powerful feature.

You see domains often rank better in the search engines if they contain one of more keywords relating to the particular niche you are involved with.

For example if you are selling products for cats, then if you have the word cat or cats in the domain name this will help you get better rankings than domains that do not have this (if everything else is equal).

When you are searching for an expired domain please check out the free expired domain list searcher program.

Essential tips to purchasing aged domains

1. Try and get a domain at least five years old (the older the better, this is a minimum).

2. Aim for a decent number of links as possible (although this is not essential).

3. Existing Page rank is not necessary but a bonus if you can find it.

4. Existing web traffic again is not necessary but is a huge bonus.

5. Make sure the domain has a keyword relating to the niche you are going to use the domain in.

6. Check the history of the domain to make sure you are happy with the old content that has been used on the domain previously. Bad content may have blacklisted the domain in the search engines. Many services allow you to search for this automatically.

7. Optional: Use a service that allows you to search closeouts. These are really cheap domains usually costing only $5 (plus standard registration fees). Wht buy premium domains if you do not need them? You do not need to spend much money to find domains that have most of the items discussed above. In fact only recently I purchased a 9 year old domain, with 200+ web visitors per day and lots of backlinks for just $5 !

Buying aged domains can really give you a an advantage over your competition, and if your smart and use the right websites, and look for the right type of domains, it need not be an expensive exercise. Isn’t your internet marketing worth spending an extra $5 to get an expired domain so you can take advantage of all these factors?

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