Reminder: When Buying A New Domain, Check Its History

Just a friendly reminder, when buying a new or used domain, make sure to check the archives, wayback machine, and any other data such as links, webmaster tools, etc you can get your hands on. before going with it.

It is not uncommon to hear someone who has ranking issues to find out the domain name they are sitting on had a very shady history, well before they acquired it.

Recently, I spotted a post on Twitter from Google's John Mueller reminding me of this. John wrote in response to a webmaster reporting a manual action with zero inbound links. John said, it is possible, he explained "sounds like the domain might have had a very spammy past."

@ALTtoBTC That sounds like the domain might have had a very spammy past. File a reconsideration request to get it reviewed.

— John Mueller (@JohnMu) September 5, 2014

So be very careful with new or used domains, you never know what history they had, so dig as deep as you can.

The topic again is not new, just a reminder:

• Buying a Used Domain? Submit a Reconsideration Request to Google
• Google's Matt Cutts On How To Buy Domain Names
• Submit a Reconsideration Request to Google if You Buy a Banned Domain

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Image credit to BigStockPhoto for shady old man