Catalogue of Domains for sale?

[wolfadeus]

A probably very common question, but unusual for me: A client's website on a certain topic was thrown out of the G index - he probably did some dirty tricks and now panics.

He wants a new website that will be successful as soon as possible and so I am now for the first time looking for a recommendable market place from where I can see the following - reliable - information:

- Url (obviously)
- Theme/Topic
- Number of Pages indexed
- Age

There are plenty of market places around, how can I tell one is respectable and reliable? I guess such things have been widely discussed here before, but I couldn't find any appropriate trhead in the library - will be grateful for both direct advice and links to previous discussions.

Thanks!

W.

[Quadrille]

With his history, he'd be wiser buying a new domain and using his (cleaned-up) content.

A fair proportion of sites for sale are being sold by people like your client; he'd not be happy to ditch one ruined site, only to spend cash buying another.

Start clean, and stay clean, would always be my advice. And that's assuming he really has learned from his experience :)

[wolfadeus]

Thanks, I agree - but he has the money and wants to spend it on an established domain, I just follow his instructions.

I know that websites from this "sphere" tend to be dirty, that is why I was asking for advice on trustworthy sources.

[oddsod]

By marketplace do you mean some research/due diligence tools?

There are links I could give you but WW TOS probably wouldn't allow it. Have you tried searches [google.com]?

[Webwork]

Argh @ oddsod. If only subversion of the TOS were so easy . . we'd soon be awash with custom tailored search queries, right? ;-P

wolfadeus, my advice isn't to "look for a marketplace" of domains. The very fact that a domain/website is publicly - or privately - listed may be the deepest cut into its future successful transfer and emergence as a powerhouse. The more signals that a website is changing hands, and possibly being repurposed or used to gain search engine love, the more likely a search engine worth its reputation will be taking pains to at least discover the obvious.

Don't be surprised that, should you buy a website with certain objectives in mind, that others will rat you out. The more public the buy, the more likely your competitors will file a grievance.

So, my $.02 is to fly low on the radar.

My best guess of what you should be doing is to search for underperforming sites - sites that rank but don't appear to be overly successful in making coin - then apply any of the various analysis tools to determine what you can about links, etc.

Bear in mind that any tool you employ, that isn't your own handcrafted tool, exposes "your interest" to the tool provider.

Also, bear in mind that any search engine utility - such as backlink checkers - may present its own issues.

IF I was a search engineer I might be aggregating information about queries checking backlinks, Pagerank, etc. and matching that data - those queries - against other data about the growth of links into or out of sites that are the subject of such queries. I'll venture that all the non-search intent querying of search engines for links, backlinks, Pagerank, etc. creates data that is used by search quality engineers to then mine for other data - such as link development patterns associated with those URLs, change of ownership indicia, repurposing indicia, etc.

Poses a bit of a dilema.

Subtlety and nuance should be the order of the day.

Public sites and public tools are neither subtle nor nuanced.

YMMV in your mission to improve your client's rankings.

[oddsod]

>>subversion
Damn, I thought you'd leave my link untouched! ;-P

Websites change hands in the wild. I don't believe that the act of changing is itself something the SEs go overboard to detect or penalise. Particularly on the small fry sites. I used to believe they were watching me but have reason to believe otherwise now. Even if they do, there are so many ways around it. For example, you could use Yahoo for your linkback searches, a Firefox addon that organises ALL your Google queries from high to low PR etc. In fact, the converse may be true. A site that's been untouched in a while that gets fresh content, a new and clean IP, and comes out of anonymous WHOIS... sends more easily detected signals and looks like a site on the up.

Finding owners willing to sell but not actively listing their sites is an art in itself. If the OP were interested in making frequent site purchases he could try honing his skills at this.

[wolfadeus]

Thank you for your answers, my fellow WWians! So we explained to the client that you can't be totally sure about a second-hand-domain and surprisingly, he agreed right away not to buy an existing one but rather to build up a portfolio of domains that we can use whenever the main one is thrown out of the index...that much about lasting success...at least he knows that he is playing with fire.

[Webwork]

To be certain that I've not mislead you, I've heard tell of folks that have acquired other underperforming websites and they were able to reap the fruits of their effort of locating and acquiring such websites. However, "hush hush" is the order of the day, probably including non-disclosure agreements. Also, since it's now become a bit of common knowledge that acquiring "old sites" is one way to apporach "the ranking issue" one might want to assume that someone somewhere has made it a game, if not a science, to "listen for signals of such activity".

Of course, if you follow what plenty of others have said, the ability of a search engine to identify such activity is suspect.

Just be mindful of the fact that "voices carry" sometimes, in unexpected ways . . so "hush, hush . . . " (There's a song in there somewhere) ;-P