How to detect a 301 on a site you don't own

[Lorel]

I have a client interested in buying a domain that is ranking at the top for it's targeted keywords. However the links pointing at the site nor the age or anything else warrant top ranking so I'm wondering if it has another domain 301'd and pointing at it. I'm concerned that if the domain is purchased without the other 301'd domain that this domain will become worthless.

Is there any way to detect an incoming 301 when you don't own the site?

[sublime1]

Not sure I completely understand the question, but I would check Yahoo Site Explorer, or maybe link:www.example.com on Google to see where the incoming links are. When you find them, you can see if they point to the current domain or an old one. Also, using a tool such as the Live HTTP Headers Firefox plugin, you can see what is going on when you click one of those links.

Another bit of forensics could include a careful check for internal links in the site. If they got sloppy, they might have left the old domain in some of their links.

Also check Google's cached pages -- if a change was quite recent, they may have old data.

I am sure there are lots of other good techniques to ferret out whether your suspicion is warranted :-)

Tom

[Lorel]

@sublime1 thanks for trying to help.

I've already checked Yahoo Site Explorer and other link tools and there are only about 3 dozen links with one at Pr 1 and all the rest are PR 0--nothing to warrant top ranking. And none of them redirect.

There has to be some kind of hidden technique to boost the ranking on this site.

BTW, the site has been online for about 6 years and this isn't a recent change.

[sublime1]

Hmm. Can you stickymail me with the domain in question?

Tom