Visit Hoover's Website Article Knowledgebase.

Dangers of Dropped Domains or Expired Domains
By: Gina Hoover © 2007

What is a dropped domain? Simply put a dropped domain is a domain name that was previously registered but for one reason or anther was not renewed by the domain owner. The general public is now allow to register the domain name. The reason could be that the owner forgot to renew the domain name or the previous domain owner did not want to renew the domain. In some cases the domain could have a PR (Page Rank) and this PR stays with the domain name even after it expires. So the new owner's site will have the same PR automatically.

If you buy a domain name you should always do a check to see if the domain is a dropped domain. Why, is this important you ask? If the domain name was previously registered and the owner did not want to renew it he could have had a good reason for not wanting to renew it. Worst case, the reason might be that he used the domain to spam the search engines beyond repair and decided to get a new domain name. If this is the case, you don't want this banned domain. If the domain has been banned, the search engines will not list your website. If they do list your website you'll never rank well for any search terms and will receive very little website traffic if any. You will also run into problems with email from your domain being blocked because the domain is a known as a "spammers domain".

Before you buy a domain, take a few minutes to check out the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org. Type in your domain name and see what comes up. If you see spammy things (lots of ads, inappropriate content, etc.) this will give you an indication that the site might have been used for spam. The Wayback Machine also tells you the age of the domain.

If you find that the domain has not been banned you still might not be OK using a dropped domain name. Once someone buys a domain and they point it to a parked page the search engines will put it in the search engine supplemental index. If can take a while to get out of the supplemental index and back into the regular search engine listings. Another problem is that Webmasters that have previously linked to that domain may remove those links after discovering the url points to a parked page.

In conclusion, it's a lot safer to buy new domains. Domains that have not been registered, that you thought up yourself. I know it's not easy but it's better in the long run. You don't have to worry about any of the problems listed above.

If you do find the perfect domain name and it just happens to be a dropped domain you should just be careful and know what you are getting into. If you do find that the domain has been dropped and banned you should contact each individual search engine to request an inclusion into the search engine index. Communicate to the search engine that you recently purchased the domain and that the website is in compliance with their search engines guidelines. Good luck with domain hunting.