When Should You Buy A Dropped Domain For Link Juice

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

Thinking of picking up a .org domain that has probably bee abandoned for some years now. Doesn't have a whole lot of links pointing to it (maybe 10?), but it DOES have one link from a prestigious midwestern University that is probably about ten years old (it says that page hasn't been updated since 2001...)

Anyway, do you have a feeling on how long a site can be abandoned before any links pointing to it won't be able to pass on any link juice?

BTW: Money-wise, I don't mind taking a chance on it (I know it doesn't cost much to buy a .org domain), but I don't want to sink a lot of TIME into resurrecting it from the dead if it won't bear any fruit...

[tangor]

Predicting future is difficult at best... however---knowing how much it will drain one's bank account on speculation is finite: you know if you can afford it. That said, "link juice" seems to be on the downside these days, and I suspect an abandoned domain might be even less...

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I don't see how buying a dropped domain for link juice will help your visitors so you probably shouldn't.

Even the term 'link juice' sounds like golf course backwater, ick.

[CainIV]

I wouldn't personally purchase any abandoned websites for this purpose. At best, the domain is a keyword match based on your research, or is highly brand-able which gives it value.

[cntt8x]

I think it useful, you can buy one then create contents, build some backlinks then put a link to your site

[wheel]

I've got lots of old dropped domains. Luv them so much maybe I'll just marry them. But I think (can't confirm) that they used to work but now Google resets on the drop. Pretty sure that's what I heard, I haven't looked at .com drops in quite a while.

But what's the cost of a domain registration? $10? Buy it, put some content on it, and let it sit a year, see what happens.

[Planet13]

But what's the cost of a domain registration? $10? Buy it, put some content on it, and let it sit a year, see what happens.

I could certainly do that. Anybody know about legal issues of using internet archive to "repopulate" the domain with its former content? Or would it be best to use original content?

[wheel]

Using archive dot org is almost certainly infringing on (C). Not sure how archive.org can do it though and not us. But still, infringement would be my best guess.

But if you rebuild the site, then just put a note on the front page saying it's being maintained temporarily for archival purposes for visitors, and here's a link to the new site....that's probably still infringing,but would the original site owner care?

[Hoople]

I would agree with wheel, not worth the copyright and/or trademark issues. I've only gone that route (copying what was on archive org) once, for the customer of mine that lost a site due to their host exiting the hosting market.

You could use a tool to scrape your chosen domain from archive org, extract the link structure and then create content to fit that framework.

Alternately you could do the whack-a-mole method and build pages to fix the 404's as they occur. Less work, but if it was a huge site the above suggestions might be less labor intensive.

[wheel]

I would agree with wheel, not worth the copyright and/or trademark issues

Not quite what I said :). I was attempting to be silent on the issue. I hate copyright infringement, but if nobody cares, then maybe nobody cares. I dunno - no judgement from me on that one.

I think the idea is to let Google think you are the original owner who screwed up. You pick up the domain and put it back in place until you pass some timeframe where Google says 'you're the original owner". Then you use the domain for whatever you want.

Whether this works or not today, I honestly can't say because I haven't tried it in a long long time. But if you're curious, for $8 I'd say some variation of this is worth testing.

The other thing that's testable is to take the dropped domain and 301 it somewhere else, to a related domain. Again, no idea if this passes link juice or not because I haven't tested it in a long long time.

You could 301 to another new domain. Or you could 301 to an existing, stable site, perhaps that makes a difference. Again, no idea. But it's cheap to test.

I wouldn't suggest you do something like 301 a dropped domain to your main domain for testing though. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't but on a hand review it's going to smell like week old fish.