Buying an old URL

Is it worth it?

[jaeden]

A friend of mine wants to sell me his old URL. It used to be ranked between number 3 and 5 for it's main keywords, but has been offline for more than a month now and is not showing up in the SERP's.

If I were to buy this URL, I would have to change domain hosts, therefore a new IP obviously. Should I expect, if after I launch this site, to recover the same position I was, or is it like starting over again?

Jaeden

ps. please answer soon as my friend wants a decision ASAP... thanks

[wanna_learn]

I guess you better start fresh!
1) Site is returning 404 (I guess) for a month now
2) You are going to change host
3) Dunno what its backlinks says? as what was the reason it was positioning well...

So, Go for a fresh one, spend some time, build on content and yeah...keep reading this Forum
;-)

[cabbie]

In my experience you have quite a good chance of this coming back.Of course with google the way it is at the moment no site can be sure of getting good placements in the serps.
This domain is not an expired domain so will not be penalised by google and though it may take a month it should come back.A fresh high pr link to it will help also.

[wanna_learn]

I thought people at this Board dun talk much about Back Links!
If backlinks are considered, do check
1) How many backlinks it still has (shown by Google and otherwise too)
2) How stable they are? and whats the quality?
3) Whats the chance you'll get a high PR new Link for bating Googlebot?

[AjiNIMC]

I had a site which was down for a month or so, I changed the pages and then give a link from a high pr site.

Everything on the track again.

Aji