I have said it before, but want to say it again in the hope people will get better educated on the subject and not buy worthless links anymore. I am getting very annoyed by people trying to scam other people by saying that they have quality and authority websites on which they sell links, while in reality they are dropped domains. Some even say that dropped domains can still be authority websites! That is so not correct and I will try to explain in a story why. - In March 2006 a restaurant registers domain tapasrestaurant.com - The restaurant has great food, great atmosphere and great prices, everybody loves it! - Naturally all the quality websites that review restaurants place a link to this great restaurant/website. - Because of all the great quality backlinks the website gains great rankings and even a PR5 in the next few years. This truly is an authority website and you would be happy to have a link from it. - In January 2010 the restaurant closes due to personal reasons of the owner. The owner has no longer any interest in the domain and let it expire. - A webmaster which sells links picks up the dropped domain in March 2010 thinking he can make good money by starting a blog and selling links on this domain and advertises it as "Authority and high quality link from PR5 website". - The un-knowing webmasters who just started learning SEO think it is a great deal and 10 people buy links on this website in April 2010 for a total amount of $500. - During the next few weeks/months the quality websites that review restaurants receive complaints from visitors that the link to tapasrestaurant.com goes to a blog with all kinds of information, but no menu, no restaurant and no place to eat, so it is worthless for the visitors of the quality websites that review restaurants and therefore they take down the links. - All of a sudden tapasrestaurant.com has no longer any good quality, authority links pointing to it anymore. The only links remaining are from a few directories and blogposts from people who visited the restaurant. - On the next PR update tapasrestaurant.com only has a PR1, no rankings, no authority and no value for backlinks. - The 10 un-knowing webmasters just got ripped of for $500. It takes a few months before dropped domains lose value, but inevitable they ALL lose their ranking power and authority status, simple due to the fact that they loose their own quality backlinks. So PLEASE stop saying that you have "high quality" links for sale if it is on a dropped domain, because that is NOT true. Links from dropped domains are pretty much worthless, unless the new owner immediately gets new high quality backlinks, but that is rarely the case.
I agree that many people who bought dropped domains have no idea how to preserve value of such domain. It does take about 2-3 years to fully recover from the dropped domain filter. It also takes more work than just renewing it once a year. I have personally turned few dropped domains around and they even gained PR in time. Some as high as PR7. And I will still say that it is a buyers responsibility to investigate before he/she spends money. Same rule applies to any other merchandise on eBay, CL etc Inexperienced people should not spend their money on something they have no clue, or face the consequences. Now, I did not say it's ok or fair to sell advertising space on worthless domains (dropped or not). We all have conscience to deal with.
Kind of a newbie, not sure I fully understand the "dropped domain filter" part of this post - are you saying that if I purchased a domain that was dropped by the previous owner, that the website wouldn't be able to rank highly for 2-3 years (even if I was doing everything right SEO-wise)?
Dropped domains are penalized by Google so having backlinks from them can not help you to improve your ranking of search engines.
If the subject changes, yes. For example if the subject of the domain used to be about "pots and plants" and then you take over the dropped domain and use it for "travel around Asia". This because it takes a while for SE's to figure out what your site is about and if all links are about "pots and plants" and you write about "travel around Asia" it just doesn't add up. The information on the page and from the links should be the same. You can speed it up by gaining quality links on "travel around Asia" related websites and make sure the anchor texts reflect that as well. If the subject stays the same, the transition is more easy and faster, but still, due to the fact that the website has a new owner and different content (even if the theme/subject is the same) it needs time to fully recover.
Well I just purchased my new domain (awesomeannie.com) around two or three months ago and I'm assuming it was a dropped domain - I'd be surprised if I was the first person to register it. I have no absolutely no idea what was on there before but I'm 100% sure my sites subject matter is different now. My current Google PageRank is 0, does this mean the domain has already "reset" in Googles eyes or is there a chance that I am still being penalized? I did transfer my old domain (walkercount.com which had PageRank 4) through Google Webmaster Tool change of address and did 301 redirects so I'm assuming that will help eventually. Just wondering if there is a way to see when a domain was dropped, what the sites subject matter was, etc. As I said I'm fairly new to this and I had no idea to look out for things like this.
I wouldn't worry so much about the history of a dropped domain. I think you just get a fresh start- so no worries. It shouldn't help or hurt. If anything, I think it is better to have the domain since you will be receiving some traffic from old links- etc.
I hope that is the case. 2-3 years seems like an awfully long time to penalize a site for something that is out of their control. I'm fine with having a fresh start but I don't like the idea of being penalized. Hopefully this is right, thanks.
I have to agree with you on this one. Dropped domains quickly lose value if it has been transformed into something that is totally irrelevant of what it used to be. The domain name also plays a major role on this, you can't have potsandplants.com and transform it into something that discusses toilet papers and the sort.
If you registered the domain the "normal" way, meaning NOT by any aftermarket sales, but through regular registration, then you have nothing to worry about. As you can see here, http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.awesomeannie.com, indeed somebody else registered it before you, but again, if you registered it the normal way, it should be fine. I also read the other thread which discusses the 301 part and just to be clear, you will need to keep 301 your old domain to your new one basically forever. If you stop doing that, the SE's will continue crawling the old domain and since it doesn't resolve anymore, any kind of benefit from those link will cease to exist. It would be best if you can ask the people who link to the old domain to change it into the new one, or at least try that with the most important links.
that does seem to be the case - there's some evidence that Google 'zero' the PR of a domain which has dropped.