Domain confusion!

domain purchase

[nkurma]

Dear Masters,
I am a bit confused about domain issue. Could anyone help me to clarify it,please.
My questions are:
Why would people be so eager to buy expired domains?

Is there any difference between "DOMAIN" and "DOMAIN NAME"?

Does expired domain have any effect on PR after extending its expiry date?

Thank you in advance
Regards
nkurma

[draggar]

I bought an expired one because I think it was a good buy and I could build a good community from it about as relevant to the domain as possible. (Yes, I'm happy with my purchase). :)

Some people buy it to resell (like buying up a forclosure property), others want to use the site, while others park it with pay-per-click ads and take in some revenue from existing traffic.

[cshel]

I've bought the expired domains of 4 former competitors because they had good backlinks and I wanted to point the traffic at my site (and get the backlinks credited to my site, too).

I've picked up other expired domains just because I liked them and thought that I might develop them someday, and still others because I thought they might have some resale value.

And no, there really isn't a difference between "domain" and "domain name" when talking about web addresses. "Domain name" is probably less ambiguous in general, but for the most part they're used interchangably.

[nkurma]

Thank you cshel and draggar for your replies. As soon as you figure out one side another one comes up. May i ask you about merits of expired domains i. e.
Will the merits (traiffic, backlinks, domain age) pass to its new owner even if the owner alters the content? Lets say that old domain was about selling tea and someone buys it but uses it for selling stationary. Now, i have heard that Google watches for the relevancy of the links and the content where the links pointing. In this case relevancy is lost, right? Will the domain still rank or attract traffic even after drastic changes?

Thank you people
nkruam

[cshel]

Well, I can't speak to how the change in content/theme will affect the value of the expired domains, because the expired domains I've picked up were my direct competitors and they all had an identical theme and very similar content to my site.

Hopefully, someone else has some experience with grabbing expired domains and changing the content/theme that they can share :)

[nkurma]

Hi cshell!
Do you think that merits of the expired domain (backlinks, domain age, traffic etc) will be revoked after some time, I mean reset to zero?

In my point of view it might happen next time Google indexes the domain which was bought and brought to life again.
As you know Google can track the history (link growth speed, content, traffic etc) of the domain. I am not mentioning about PR since expired domains often do not have any pages.

If the answer is yes, then I do not see any point of buying an expired domain unless I am after a special keyward brand name.

What is it from SEO point of view?

Any ideas, please?