Just bought a sweet domain! How do I check the history?

[Ronnie55]

Somewhat of a n00b here, as you guessed from my thread title.

Just registered a really good domain though. 11 letters. pretty brandable but also contains a great keyword phrase.

.net and some other extensions are registered, so that's how good the keywords are. and I got .com

I went here to view the archives: Internet Archive: Wayback Machine

What else can I do? how can i check if the site has ever been penalized by google, etc?

TY!

edit: after a further look at the archive in the link i posted above, it originally existed in 2001. So it's a very old domain. The last time they have a record of it being online is 2004. I don't know if this is good to have a domain that existed so long ago?

 

[richcookies]

Why bother, just proceed with your intentions and all will be fine. Domain names are not as big as they used to. Your contents and setup would rule how you rank. Penalized or not, once you start posting Google would just start you afresh

 

[Ronnie55]

Why bother, just proceed with your intentions and all will be fine. Domain names are not as big as they used to. Your contents and setup would rule how you rank. Penalized or not, once you start posting Google would just start you afresh

okay sounds good. With the last archive being in 2004 i think i'm safe either way haha.

I'm still curious about my last question though... any benefit to having a domain that was first registered and existed so long ago? (although not continuously registered).

Is this better than a brand new domain that was registered for the first time?

 

[erect]

I'm not saying it works with every domain, but I've had more than a few that I bought to brand and then built but they ended up not able to be indexed (bitch slapped in the past). A GWT contact fixed the problem in a few days after I pointed them to the old archive.org and the new site .. as well as mentioning the registrar changes.

... if your plans were to refurbish the old content and design, that might be an issue.

Moral of the story, if this isn't a hub for your money site, just build that bitch out a little bit and see what happens. If it's obviously a different site than one that was slapped, you'll likely be able to bring it back to life. I would probably trust ahrefs more than archive.org when considering the "tainted history" of a domain. Just use common sense when looking at existing backlinks.