If you’ve been keeping up with this series, and you’ve decided that you want to try playing in the expired domains game, you’re going to need to know what to look for and, more importantly, what to avoid.

Sure, when you evaluate a domain and find a big, fat PR6 sitting on it, and it’s only a $10 bid at Godaddy, your blood pressure will spike and you’ll get that nervous/giddy feeling in the pit of your stomach. First of all, calm down. Much like real estate, expired domain speculation requires you to apply your business sense to all purchases, instead of using your emotions.

Yes, that PR6 is very attractive, but if you don’t know the whole story, you could find yourself with dud of a domain. Now, keep in mind that this series of posts I’ve written is based on the buy expired domain and put profitable content on it business model. These evaluations do not apply if you simply want a particular domain name because it looks or sounds cool.

Ok, let’s get started, shall we? I’ve run the first 1000 domains in Godaddy’s auction checking for PR, Google pages indexed, Google backlinks, Yahoo Pages indexed, Yahoo backlinks, MSN pages indexed, MSN backlinks, Alexa traffic rank, and Alexa backlinks. Please keep in mind that I’m writing this on the morning of July 1, 2006. The numbers I’m getting from the Search Engines may have changed by the time you read this.Out of those 1000, there are 27 that meet my minimum criteria - which is a Pagerank of 1 or higher. There are tons more with PR of 0, but plenty of pages indexed in MSN and Yahoo, and existing backlinks. Don’t think that you can only get expired domains that have a PR of 1 or higher - that’s just my personal criteria.You’ll notice that a few PR4 domains are there - let’s start with those.

Test #1: Is the domain an understandable, worthwhile name?

You’ve got to be very creative to shoehorn a niche content site about Mesothelioma into a domain name of “qq735.net”. Evaluate the domain name itself for readability and topicality. Does it make sense, and does it fit into a niche? Additionally, whatever niche it fits in with, can you find or create content that will match the niche? Finally, you may want to do a quick bit of research to check the profitability of of that niche.

Let’s check our PR4 domains-

RimFirePublishing.com - the domain makes sense, and it can be used for any type of publishing site (eBooks, audio/video, even as an Amazon affiliate.) This domain passes test #1.

whizalert.org - the domain makes sense, and it could be used for a number of niches. For example, we could use it for a computer news and commentary site, a spyware adsense/content site, anything geeky, really. This domain also passes test #1.

defeatingpancreaticcancer.org - the domain makes sense, but it is obviously limited to a pancreatic cancer niche site. This is not bad, but I wish it were more flexible. Let’s take a quick look at the PPC market for pancreatic cancer. Overture gives 98 keywords, almost all with PPC bids, ranging from 10 cents per click up to $1.99 per click. Monthly searches is around 30,000, and competition looks pretty low. I’d say the market numbers support keeping this domain in the running.

Test #2: Is the PR mirrored from another site?

Go to Google and type in the domain (don’t use a link: or site: in front of it just yet). Does the domain come back as itself, or does it mention a different domain? If the domain name you are evaluating previously had a 301 redirect to another site in place, Google considers the two to be the same domain, and if you search on the one domain, results (and PR) from the other will come up. To see this in action, go to Google and search on “nichebot.com” (without the quotes). The results that are returned will be Google’s results. If you were using a PR check tool, nichebot.com would come back with a PR10, because it is inheriting that PR from Google.com.

RimFirePublishing.com and DefeatingPancreaticCancer.org are both listed properly- the PR they have is real PR.

As I write this, WhizAlert.org comes up as “no results”. That tells me that Google has dumped the site since the last PR update, and I should disregard the site’s current PR, as it may no longer be there the next time PR is updated.

Test #3: Are the old site’s pages indexed in Google, or is the advertising Godaddy is showing on the domain indexed?

This one is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, if the old site’s content is still cached in Google, it implies that either Google is not spidering the domain (which is now showing Godaddy’s ads), and therefore Google does not consider it to be important enough to keep up-to-date, or it implies that the previous owner simply didn’t update the site very often, and therefore Google never had a need to recache and reindex. You can never know for sure which is the case. If Google simply doesn’t spider there often because the site was never updated, a few new pieces of content and some new inbound link love would get Google’s spider coming back really quick.

However, if the registrar’s advertising is cached and indexed in Google, then that implies that Google’s algos think the domain is important enough to spider more frequently… which means once you get your hands on it, hopefully Google will still regularly spider and index it.

The jury is still out on which situation is better. My personal preference is for domains that have the registrar’s advertising indexed, AND Google is still showing backlinks on other sites to the domain. That tells me that Google thinks the domain is at least somewhat important and has been spidered recently, and it tells me that, for whatever reason, Google did not “reset” the domain in their system (rumor has it that when a domain becomes expired, Google detects this and kills the site in their SERPS. Because domains that you buy at registrar auctions never actually “expired”, Google may not notice)

RimFirePublishing.com - The old site is still indexed, and the home page was last cached on May 24th. Based on what I can see of the cached pages, it doesn’t look like this site was updated regularly. Because of inactivity, Google doesn’t spider the site very often. Checking the Google backlinks, there are none. What this means is that Google doesn’t consider the domain important, AND there are no existing backlinks to support the site’s current PR4.

If Yahoo or MSN had backlinks to this domain, then we’d know that eventually Googlebot would find them as well. But in this case, there are no backlinks anywhere. On the next PR update, this site will lose its PR. This domain has just failed the process, and I have no further interest in it. If you want to do a publishing-type site, getting this domain won’t give you any advantage over buying a brand new domain.

WhizAlert.org - 81 pages in Google, and they are all the registrar’s advertising. That tells me that the spider has been there recently. However, there are no remaining backlinks in Google, so it looks like Google has killed this domain in its SERPS. However, there are backlinks in Yahoo and MSN… so links do exist. Google will eventually find them and reindex them, so this one is not quite out of the running yet.

DefeatingPancreaticCancer.org - The old site’s pages are still indexed, and the home page was last cached on Jan 31, 2006. Googlebot considers this to be a pretty dusty site. Checking the backlinks, I see that the only external backlink comes from the company which designed the site (which is a PR5 page.) So, if I were to get this domain, I could expect that PR5 link to exist for awhile (I doubt those guys pay attention to when a domain they are linking to expires…), so the PR for this domain is valid, and I would expect it to remain at least PR4 for the forseeable future.

There are also additional links in Yahoo and MSN that Google will (probably) eventually pick up, so although the spider probably doesn’t come around too much anymore, with some fresh content and some basic promotion, I think this one could be a winner.

Test #4: Existing, REAL backlinks.

I alluded to this criterion in the previous section, but just to reiterate: if Google shows no backlinks, but MSN and Yahoo do, Google will eventually find those links again and count them. However, if no search engine shows any backlinks, it doesn’t matter what the PR is - the domain is dead and you may as well just buy a brand new one.

Based on this research, I would definately buy DefeatingPancreaticCancer.org. WhizAlert.org is a weak “maybe”. I’d have to examine the backlinks that MSN and Yahoo have for the domain. If those sites linking in to WhizAlert.org have the PR to support the PR4 that it is currently reporting, I’d go ahead and get it. And finally, RimFirePublishing.com is a definate no… with no backlinks showing anywhere, it’s no better than a brand new domain.

So there you have it - the process I use to weed through the thousands of expired domains and domains on auction. My pointers don’t just apply to TDNAM auctions - I use the same process for every expired domain I examine. However, in the case of a true “expired” domain for which I will be using Pool.com or Club Drop, I also ask myself if the $60 fee to backorder the domain would be worth it. In the case of all three here, the answer would be no.

In fact, it’s so easy finding decent expired domains from registrar auctions, I won’t even mess with expired domains unless it’s a real whopper of a domain… but of course, others in the game know about these domains too, so it usually ends up getting into a bloody bidding war. Personally, I just prefer to pick the easy, low-hanging fruit :)

Good luck in your expired domain efforts, and if you have any questions or comments, the comment form is open to all.