Good news about expired domains

Another GoogleGram for webmasters..

[GoogleGuy]

Hey, the index is going to be coming out real soon, so I wanted to give people some idea of what to expect for this index. Of course it's bigger and deeper (yay!), but we've also put more of a focus on algorithmic improvements for spam issues. One resulting improvement with this index is better handling of expired domains--the authority for a domain will be reset when a domain expires, even though dangling links to the expired domain are still out on the web. We'll be rolling this change in over the next few months starting with this index.

Most webmasters won't notice much change, but I wanted to give folks some advance notice. If your toolbar display changes a little up or down--don't panic. :) The change I mentioned, plus things like having more pages crawled in our index, can affect the toolbar display. As always, the traffic and conversions you get matter more than how many green pixels the toolbar shows.

Over the next few months, I think you'll see more emphasis at Google on scalable algorithms rather than responding to individual spam reports--please set your expectations accordingly--but we are also putting more emphasis on reinclusion requests from webmasters.

As always, I'll try to be around to answer questions and offer advice.. :)

[PFOnline]

GoogleGuy: " When you register a domain for the first time, you won't get the old links for free. You'll have to get them the old-fashioned way. :) "

Now this makes sense! Great work! This can only help create better, more relevant search results. Thumbs up! :)

[toolman]

>>>You are pretty expert at this, right?

Sometimes the best source of info is your competitors. ;)

[Visit Thailand]

After reading above threads I am curious about this, as domains I own personally sometimes after being developed move into my company name and therefore I have to transfer all rights over to the company even though the company is mine.

This would change the whois, so would that mean that all the links we have earned as a domain would be lost because of the change in ownership even though it hasn't really changed hands at all?

[GoogleGuy]

No Visit Thailand, this case shouldn't be a problem.

[ThomasB]

GoogleGuy, I think I`m a victim of it:
I registered my domain in nov 2002, launched the site in dec 2002, got an ODP Listing in january (directory link shows up when searching for allinurl:www.domain.com) and about 40 links from other pages (even 1 PR 8(a friends site), some pr 6, ...).

But I can`t find the site when searching for the title or backlinks, just allinurl works. The site was formerly owned by a company who gave the domain up in june 2002 (we didn`t know that). It had 2 backlinks and PR 3 when we started. So could it be a case of the expired-domain-filter or banning? (No hidden links, text, images, ... on the site).

Thanks!

[slk230]

Hey GoogleGuy

Will the PR be calculated at the end of the update or near the begining. Just wondering if first the update is done, then new links calculated, then PR assigned.

slk230

[teeceo]

"Googleguy"

From what date does google start dicounting the expired domain links? I mean, is it, If the domain expired in 2000-2003 then the back links will die?

teeceo.

[GoogleGuy]

slk320, it can happen in either order. teeceo, I would say that more attention will be on making sure that things work well going forward.

[ThomasB]

any suggestion what I should do?
btw the PR at www2 is 0, before it was 7.(6 was a typo)

[OppositeView]

GoogleGuy,

All I see in this update is "penalities" for legit domains and even more SPAM than before.

IMO Google continues to do a poor job at getting rid of the spam.

D

[Key_Master]

>>When you register a domain for the first time, you won't get the old links for free. You'll have to get them the old-fashioned way.

I can't imagine the technical hurdles needed to manage this but if you guys can get it to work (and I don't doubt you will), more power to you. Does this also mean that penalties on expired domains will not be automatically transferred to the new ownership?

[GoogleGuy]

ThomasB, could be a lot of things completely unrelated to expired domains, but: If you fill out a spam report and mention the domain name, I'll be happy to check it out--or put your site name in your profile.

[GoogleGuy]

OppositeView, feel free to do a spam report on the queries you're trying. I'm keeping an eye on the spam report queue and so far it's running much lower than average for an update. I can count the number of reports with one hand--just barely. :) Send over the queries you're trying though; I'd be curious to see what you're talking about.

[jbauder]

googleguy ... I gotta say I'm totally freakin floored, give us your bosses name and email address so we can all write and explain about your deserving a raise ... ;-)

[GoogleGuy]

Well, I do have to go to bed sometime soon.. :)

[jbauder]

don't have nightmares about 6,344 messages sitting in this thread when you wake up

[GoogleGuy]

too late. :) If I head off to bed, keep the faith for me for a few hours. :)

[jbauder]

I think I got the answers down pretty good, just change my username to Google_Guy and I could probably take over for you.

Seriously though answering these peoples q's does go above and beyond, and with you guys being "the" game in town ...

Let's just say you certainly wouldn't have to do it

[jbauder]

gg I just thought of a question as well and if you don't want to get into it just say so, but can you give an approx breakdown (%) of seaches made at google.com vs yahoo.com and aol.com

thanks

[GoogleGuy]

Mmm. Good question--honestly I'm not sure. I know that it's a lot, but that's all I know. :)

Okay, I'll see folks later. Take it easy!
GoogleGuy

[rfgdxm1]

>Well, I do have to go to bed sometime soon.. :)

Who is your boss GoogleGuy? I should write him and suggest that your daily company methamphetamine ration be increased. ;)

[canuck]

Could someone point me to a webpage or describe the difference between a "doorway page" and an acceptable webpage as pertaining to Google.

I'm especially interested in "typo" webpages for mispellings and if these are acceptable on a limited basis if they are directly related to the website's content.

- Thanks

[Visit Thailand]

Who is your boss GoogleGuy? I should write him and suggest that your daily company methamphetamine ration be increased. ;)

If that happened we would have to call Google, Googled!

[WindSun]

When you register a domain for the first time, you won't get the old links for free.

I am curious about what happens to the ODP and Yahoo directory links - are they ignored, or?
Seems like even if you update them for the new owner, Google would have no way to know that.

[hmpphf]

Interesting - this might bring the market for expired .com addresses more into line with the market for expired .co.uk's.

Because .co.uk's have a lengthy detagged > suspended process they rarely have any PR when you eventually get your hands on them. It's then all down to the value of the domain name's constituent words and phrases or any business equity that it might carry that cause one domain name to have more value than another.

I've noticed that one of my .com's that I bought as an expired domain has slipped from first place for it's target search phrase to zillionth place. Could be any number of reasons for this though, so I'm not jumping to any firm conclusions. I don't care, anyway, it's all a game*.

*Unless all the websites I've ever worked on fall from their elevated position in Google - then I won't be happy :)

[Dynamoo]

Yes, I have a couple that I bought up now at PR0, despite the fact that links have been *added* after I bought them a few months ago. I'd expect *some* drop in PR on these sites, maybe from a 5 to a 4, but they're at PR0.

This is a problem because they're damned good domain names and it appears that the new inbound links are being swallowed up in the PR0 void.

Put another way, resetting the count is fair enough, but anyone in this position would need to know that the new links are actually going to be counted, else we may as well give up on those domains altogether.

[vitaplease]

JeremyL, we're using multiple sources of data stretching back to 2000 in order to cross-check. No one should get caught accidently.

Googleguy, pretty amazing stuff!

So every link has a "date-create-tag" behind it.
I suppose that will also help find Fresh stuff and adjust for bias against old content not receiving recent links.

similar stuff here:

from: [google.com...]

Laird Breyer, for his project, Markovian Page Ranking Distributions: Some Theory and Simulations. This project examined various properties of the Markovian process behind Google's PageRank algorithm, and suggested some modifications to take into account the "age" of each link to reduce Pagerank's tendency to bias against newly-created pages.

[hmpphf]

Haha! Call me Mr Crazy but after reading this thread I went and regged a .com that's listed in Yahoo and had just dropped. Maybe I'm just a dying breed and I haven't noticed it yet.

[adsoft13]

Thank you, GoogleGuy :)

Now I see just 1 way of "spammming", which is not penalized yet ... and most of webmaters uses it.
It is kink exchange ONLY for web engines - so not for useers ... I don't think user need 100 and more links pages with absolutely similar contant and just a few description to each link + it is very hard to get to it usually (small link anchor from bottom of home page - that's it).

Any thoughts on this matter?

[Hollywood]

GoogleGuy (think he is in sleepy land)

Anyone can yell at me for this if this has been covered.

1> I design a site and get some major SEO in, I then link exchange the heck out of it, the correct way of course.

I have a PR of say 5-6 then I want to sell the site, as long as the domain does not expire this is no problem for the next owner right?

2> The only way to get a high PR site is to buy it as opposed to developing the SEO and PR myself?

So there is no harm in buying a high PR site as long as it has not expired right?

~Hollywood