Where To / Advice On -- Buying "Old" Domains

[grant]

A client of mine is (gasp) just getting into the travel space (yea, good luck).

I am aware of Google's preference for tenured domains, and have a few questions for anyone who has purchased an older domain (with PR4 or more) for that reason.

1. Assuming you did a 301 from the old domain to the new, did you see the new domain benefit from the 301? If so, can you describe what you observed? (SERP changes, backlinks, PR)

2. If you know of places to buy domains (beyond ebay), I'd appreciate that info.

[edited by: Webwork at 3:04 am (utc) on Aug. 6, 2005]
[edit reason] Opening up thread a bit [/edit]

[Webwork]

I'm opening up this thread a bit to invite members - in a toned down, non-promotional manner - to offer up in the thread whatever insight they have about where one can find "old domains to buy".

Keep 'em short and sweet. No "voting" ("great", "sucks"). This is an experiment. Show how such threads survive as educational threads. Thanks.

NO hotlinked URLs will survive. Website names will.

[edited by: Webwork at 3:09 am (utc) on Aug. 6, 2005]

[Webwork]

For starters, there are domain forums where all manner of domains are posted for sale, some that would fit your description.

This would include: DNForum.com and NamePros.com.

[edited by: Webwork at 2:09 am (utc) on Jan. 15, 2006]

[themedianetwork]

Sedo.com and Afternic.com are the biggest public reseller sites.

You may also want to check out buydomains.com, they have around 500,000 domains in their inventory.

[grant]

Thanks for the info.

I checked out the aforementioned sites to buy domains, but since the domains for sale are (mostly) offline (which means they haven't built up any reputation), and have no PR, can anyone speak to the value of buying a domain simply for its registration date?

Or are there places I should be looking to buy older domains that are up and have some PR?

[TheGuyAboveYou]

Hi

Typ websites for sale on G and you will get some good ones.

[nativenewyorker]

Some of the major domain auction venues offer an opportunity to acquire selected preowned domains that may have backlinks or PageRank. These domains are auctioned off before they go into "pending delete" status. Since they avoid pending delete, they keep their original registation date. AFAIK, such domains keep their backlinks and PageRank, instead of being reset to zero, as is the case with domains that reenter the available registration pool after they're released from pending delete.

Bear in mind that the majority of expired domains have never been developed and have neither backlinks nor PageRank.

[Rodney]

another large domain forum is namepros.com

That being said, if you are looking for "old" domains that haven't expired (with PR), then you're basically looking to buy a website.

I'm not sure of any places that *specifically* do this, but by browsing the domain forums, you are likely to see some people selling domains that they've owned for awhile.

However, IMO, I don't think the time spent doing this (or the money) would be worth the same time put into content and link building on a new domain.