the banned formerly-abused domain, how to research?

[blakekr]

I was just reading a fascinating 8-page thread included several posts from GoogleGuy where he advises not buying "used" domains, since they may be banned and the bans are hard to lift.

Several others pointed out that any savvy domain buyer should know enough to research the domains' history and determine whether a ban was earned.

Obviously I'm not one of those savvy people! I understand you can get a snapshot of former site incarnations using the WayBack archive.org tool, but this alone doesn't seem to give much information. I suppose you could try to "view source" and look for hidden text, keyword stuffing, etc., but these seem like small things that (according to some people) are usually not enough to earn a ban.

So, what kind of due diligence is a 'serious' domain buyer supposed to do to avoid ending up with a tainted domain?

[blakekr]

bump

[textex]

If the domain was previously owned, DON"T BUY IT!
I have developed and marketed two sites that were previously owned. I checked out the waybackmachine and did not see any spam on sites in question.

I have tons of links and put in a great deal of effort in getting these links. As you know, it is not easy getting people to link to you w/white PR.

End result, neither site is indexed anywhere on the web.

My question, what should I do with these sites?

[hmpphf]

You can pick up some awesome domain names on the drop. I doubt whether I or thousands of other people who track dropped domains would stop just because it upsets Google.

[JoeyBall]

How do you get a banned site back in google?

[blakekr]

If you read what GoogleGuy has to say, it's very, very hard to get a banned site in.

They prefer not to put them back in at all, and so he advises to stay away from pre-owned domains, or at the very least to research them *thoroughly.*

Problem is, I'm not sure what constitutes a way to carry out due diligence on pre-owned domains.

As for Google, I guess they carry about 60% of search engine traffic, so for me, not getting in would be just about a death sentence in terms of free traffic.

[Jenstar]

Here is GoogleGuy's advice [webmasterworld.com] on getting a domain into Google when the usual submit url and backlinks don't work.

[blakekr]

So, anyone reading this have some ideas (other than glancing at the Wayback Machine) on how to research "used" domains to avoid buying tainted ones?