Buying expired domains to point to your domain in 2020

[FranticFish]

I'm aware that Google is a registrar, and I'm aware of Matt Cutts' historical comments (and also John Mueller's early this year) about the folly of buying an expired domain for PR.

I've been asked to advise on whether or not someone should purchase a domain which used to be top ranking site in the niche. It currently has a 'for sale' broker's message, so even Google were not a registrar it's not hard to work out that the business is closed and the domain has changed hands.

Everything I've read would indicate to me that the purchase would be a complete waste of money. It's surely an easy thing to detect and discount. But I have no direct experience. ANd i have found that Google are not always as clever as they say they are.

Has anyone tried this recently?

[JS_Harris]

You're touching on two subjects.

Re: the title - any benefit from buying a dropped domain and redirecting will be short-lived, at best.

Re: Buying previously well ranked domains and returning them to glory happens all the time. The trick is to restore the original urls with the original content quickly and allowing Google to digest the change of hands before making too many additional changes. Not too many top sites will become available like this but some decent sites needing some key changes do all the time. Beware branded domains, just because it's dropped doesn't clear you of copyright or brand infringement.

[RedBar]

Been there, seen it, done it, had it ... I've gone from hundreds of EMDs with mini sites down to a very small hard core of quality sites.

It is worth buying if it's a reasonable price and doesn't conflict with brands etc as JS_Harris points out and especially so if the existing site is a not a particularly memorable name and the available one is specifically memorable for the widget(s) and used for B2C marketing purposes.

For B2B it's not so critical yet can be helpful ... for me it simply boils down to price, less than $1K and I'd probably buy, much more and no thanks.

[martinibuster]

We know it's a low level affiliate spammer technique. So the question to ask them is, is this who you are? Are you ready to lose if it should come to that?

If not then buy it defensively to keep it out of a future competitor's grasp or develop it as an alternative site but don't interlink, just use it to knock out competitors and send conversions over.

[FranticFish]

Thank you everyone for the replies, very helpful.

It seems that everyone agrees that buying to point is risky, useless, or both, whereas buying to re-develop in its own right (or to prevent others doing the same) might have some business value if the price is right. Advice on branding also noted - thanks.

[tangor]

It all depends on how deep are your pockets.

Personally tend to throw money at what really works.

YMMV

[randle]

Our experience has been that no matter how much you try and reestablish the content and urls, and basically put humpty dumpty back together again, whatever good rankings the site enjoyed just don't return. However, if there are still lots of sites linking to it (which there probably are) visitors do continue to find there way there via that.

I would not place much value on the domain based upon past rankings. Obviously, a site that changes hands in an orderly manner, is a different matter.