I just got one question: will an expired and then reactivated domain get sandboxed (in the meantime it lost its PR and isn't indexed by Google, of course)? Has anyone checked that? Any views are warmly welcome...
My site hasn't been indexed after two months. I asked Google, they said this website broke their policy, but I guess it's just a standard reply, better avoid using any expired domain.
if they say it broke their policy, then its NOT a standard reply. an expired domain is out of google in days, but as soon as its active again, and still having old links, it should be back in a matter of days as well. So if they didnt index it after 2 months, and you DO have normal PR4ish links (About 5-10 at least) then yeah.. You probably bought some crap
I have registered an expired domain 8 months ago and Google won't rank it despite good content and backlinks. It is 1st page for "designer handbags" now on beta msn but Google still disregards it completely. I have been told by numerous seo's to stay away from expired domains since Google knows that many name squatters specialize in registering them and using similar content on all of them ... so the rest of us pay for it. Anyways, who knows what tomorrow brings though. If a name is good, the rankings should be worth the wait. Mike
I've bought many expired domains, and I've experienced to get both "sandboxed" and not... A couple of the times I experienced that googlebot wouldn't visit the domain at all, no matter how many links I directed towards it. After two months without spidering I mailed webmaster @ google.com about it, and explained that I had aquired/backordered the domains two months ago, and I attached a copy of the new whois data (that proved this). I didn't get a reply, but three days later googlebot had visited both domains, and I found them in the google index 5-6 days later.. It may have been a coincidence, but I choose to believe that the google staff had read my mail and sent googelbot there.. (I've also heard other similar stories). But you need to attach the whois info (or other proof that you've just bought the name)
Of course the first thing you do is to inform Google. They rarely reply but are always 100% interested in those things. Be sure however, that all bad neighbourhood links to your website, if there are any, are gone.
Your experience makes me worry about it more, I read somewhere that expired domains take longer to be indexed, I will wait another two months before contact Google again. I also asked on this forum before, the site was crawled by Google several days at the beginning, but stopped coming after that. I'm sure the website doesn't break any Google policy, it only has unique content and didn't do any link exchange.
From what I've heard about expired domains, the previous links are negated and PR is reset - the domain may not even been indexed due to some form of expired domain filter.
right ... you basically have to start over unless you buy the name from the previous owner before it expires.