Buying a site - penalised or sandboxed?

Professional help needed!

[oasisx]

I am in the process of purchasing two sites from someone for a significant $#*$!XX amount. They are very good sites and excellent domain names in a very competetive industry, but they are apparently sandboxed due to age - 8 months and five months old.

I have been shown the results of an allinanchor search which is apparently a good predictor and it's page 1 for the best keyphrase.

How can I be sure it is simply sandboxed and not penalised and they're trying to offload it on me? It's pretty cheap for what it is...

How accurate is allinanchor as a predictor? There are many backlinks and it's currently PR5 with predicted PR7 <using an online tool>. Thanks if you are able to offer any information!

[edited by: tedster at 3:25 pm (utc) on Dec. 29, 2006]

[derekwong28]

I feel that you should buy and price the site on its current revenue rather than whether it will come out of the sandbox or not: it may never come out. Similarly PR predictors are never accurate. It is extremely rare for sites to leap from 5 to 7, they usually go to PR6 first.

The fact that is is in very competitive industry may mean that it has been penalized for duplicate content. You should check how many pages are indexed and whether any of them are in the supplementary index.

[topr8]

if you are not an expert and something seems to good to be true then...

it is too good to be true, steer clear

[inbound]

If the current owner was confident that the site would be number 1 anytime soon he/she would not be selling.

[JRyan]

Have to agree with everyone else, pay for current value if at all.

[MrStitch]

"I have been shown the results of an allinanchor search....."

That right there tells me they are SELLING something.

Maybe this is a new market for anyone here far more evil than I could be.

Generate some sites, and show ignorant would-be buyers all kinds of stats on this, that, and anything you can muster up.

"Yeah man, pay per click rates on that term are $30.00 a whack! BUY NOW!"

Hey... that kind of dumb corporate logic worked through out the 80's, and is still seen quite often today.

[oasisx]

Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't aware that some sites never come out of the sandbox... and allinanchor is not a good indicator?

As for too good to be true... well even the site drops down the rankings it is still an excellent domain name so that would be a fallback if it all goes wrong. I'll be using escrow of course.

[eljefe3]

Why not buy on the domain name value and any clicks that come from a direct type in? Forget the rest of the sale pitch and concentrate on these issues. Any other traffic is just a bonus.