Person using expired domain and its links to drive traffic
-
Hi, I know about people using expired domains to drive juice to their primary site but what about people using AN expired domain as their primary site (totally changing that site into a trashy affiliate-marketing vehicle)?
The site I'm looking at is thegunzone.com. It has, according to Semrush, almost 38K links. It used to be a legit 17-year-old firearms hobby site, and this is what it originally looked like:
http://web.archive.org/web/20120213184627/http://thegunzone.com:80/
Here is its last page before it closed and the domain purchased by the affiliate marketer:
http://web.archive.org/web/20170315084035/http://www.thegunzone.com/
It closed around February of 2017, and some affiliate marketer bought it and all its backlinks. However, all those backlinks, which were previously to various articles, are now directed back to those articles (which don't exist anymore) but the homepage, including Wikipedia links. Here's an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygonal_rifling
At the bottom, in the 7th Reference, there's a link to an article called " "Learning About Shooting . . ." but if you click on the original link, it just goes to thegunzone.com homepage. Again, the site's totally different. And there are just thousands of such backlinks to former articles that don't exist anymore but are redirected to this schlocky site's homepage (and it's passing its juice through too).
My question is this: this cannot be kosher with Google backlinking policies, right? Is this prevalent on the internet? Why hasn't thegunzone.com been found out and its rankings penalized yet? And how do I report him? I see tons of other sites using this basic strategy too on search results with various hunting keywords. (Disclosure: I do own a hunting/firearms blog, but I don't do any backlinking at all.)
Any help would be sincerely appreciated.
-
I think that it is extremely risky. The more work and money that you have invested in the website that will be the recipient of the redirect the greater the risk.
This is a methond for people who do not have a big investment in their website and are simply looking for a low effort way to gain a small amount of ephemeral juice.
-
Can we get a 2019 update on expired domains.
Do you think it's a good idea to research and find high powered DA expired domains to point back to a website or page?
Do you think it's a good idea to research and find high traffic expired domains to point to website or page to generate more traffic?
Does Google look at buying expired domains as a negative. Anyone got feedback on expired domains and what they recommend etc.
-
Thanks, EGOL, for your advice. Yes, I will follow it (i.e., spend time on creating the best site I could). On thing, though:
"Is expired domains against Google's webmaster guidelines? I don't think that it is."
Well, Google has punished private blog networks on the past, and this site is sorta like a PBN except it's only one site. However, like a PBN, it took an expired domain's backlinks and redirected to itself (i.e., it uses another site's backlinks--the previous thegunzone's backlinks--for itself). The two incarnations of the site are totally different. This is what irritated me. The guy didn't at all earn those backlinks, esp. since almost all of them go to articles that don't exist anymore (but are redirected to the homepage).
Oh, well, whatever. I'll follow your advice. Thanks!
-
We can look at almost any SERP and see people doing things that we don't like, things that we think that Google should be slapping down. Sometimes what they are doing is directly against Google's terms of service. Sometimes they are not against terms of service and Google really doesn't care. Is expired domains against Google's webmaster guidelines? I don't think that it is. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en
You can use them too if you want, but I would not use them because I don't think that they are a good bet. I think that my skills are better spent on building something right from the beginning and working long term.
Crime? Not crime? Either way, inside and outside of Google people get away with things all the time, but if they do enough crime or sneaky stuff or shortcuts, things usually fall apart on them or they get caught. I can look back at "who was in my SERPs" over 15 years and about every five years there is almost a complete changeover - but the people working to make a great site remain and get stronger. Crime and sneaky stuff gets weeded out. Some sites that used to be good get weeded out because they take their foot off the gas or start taking shortcuts.
If these things bother you, then you are probably doing your best to run a good site. So just keep working, doing a high quality job. Spend 100% of your energy there and waste no energy thinking about people getting away with stuff, because, in the not very distant future, people doing the sneaking, the crime, the shortcuts will drop to below competitive positions, if they do not disappear completely. Hang in there!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I easily no-follow my affiliate links?
Hi, I am in the process of setting up an affiliate marketing campaign for my site. I have done a bit of research and understand that it is safest in terms of SEO to add no-follow to the links from the affiliate sites. What is the easiest and simplest way to implement this?
Affiliate Marketing | | whiteonlySEO2 -
NoFollow Affiliate links from (very) shady websites will effect rankings?
Should I be worried , and if so what to do, if affiliates are linking from shady / gaming/adult websites? or dost the fact that the links are nofollow solve this issue completely ?
Affiliate Marketing | | KSafer0 -
Does Canonical Tag passes link juice to the original URL?
We are using Canonical tags at almost all the pages of our eCommerce website. We have various sorting options like "High to Low", "Best Sellers", etc., due to this page URLs get change with some dynamic URL parameters. To avoid duplicity, we are using canonical tag on each page which point to the original url. Also, we are using IBM Coremetrics to track traffic and conversions, but to measure referral traffic in Coremetrics, we have to add tracking parameters in the URL. So, while link building we need to share URLs with Coremetrics tracking parameters in the URL, but the canonical of this page is pointing to the original URL. Suppose we have a Page that needs to be shared with Coremetrics tag: domain.com/category-name/?cm_mmc=Referral_-xyz--izUPF8VmRng--3 This Page has the canonical tag pointing to the original url: domain.com/category-name/ My question is if the URL: domain.com/category-name?cm_mmc=Referral_-xyz--izUPF8VmRng--3 got shared on other websites, will it pass link juice to the original URL: domain.com/category-name.
Affiliate Marketing | | Ramendra.Singh0 -
What is the right way to link to your main site?
Hi, we have a system for tracking the leads that comes from a specific affiliate website. each affiliate has a unique tracking code. not only for affiliates that work with us but also for the SEO team has an affiliate tracking code so our bosses can track the leads and traffic that come from the activity of the SEO team. this means, links towards our website look like: www.mydomain.com/?t_src=campaign&t=AFF&t_cre=links&A=371 www.mydomain.com/?A=371 I have few questions about this: 1. This is the right way to link to my company site? How dose google crawl those link? It's can harm the link value? 2. What is my option to show my boss all the traffic / leads that our seo team brings to the site trough Google Analytics? Hope to get your support. Thanks in advance.
Affiliate Marketing | | JonsonSwartz0 -
Income potencial of a website from ad platforms in terms of the daily traffic?
Hello all, I would like to have an idea of the potential monthly income for traffic generation (I mean just for visits to the website and not considering the sales of any given product or service) in a website, in the case I am using ads&marketing platforms for ads diplays. I know it can be very variable, depending on sales achieved, leads generated,etc...but just focusing on traffic on the website, what would be a reasonable figure? 1000 visits per day?= $1 dollar? 100,000 visits per day?=$??? Thank you very much for the help and support, Antonio
Affiliate Marketing | | aalcocer20030 -
Which affiliate programs pass the best SEO value through their links?
How good is Google at detecting the affiliate nature of those links? How does this rate as a linkbuilding strategy?
Affiliate Marketing | | menachemp0 -
How many affiliate links is considered too many?
Hi, Let's say you have great reviews for 50 products and some of these products do have affiliate links on review pages. And then you have user scores and you come up with a top 20 product list sorted by user scores. Now if you have the list of top 20 products on one page and all these products have an affiliate link (with nofollow relation and a 301 redirect) on the same page with only a couple of images and a summary of the review linked to the review pages, would this still be considered as what Google calls a "bridge page"? Would it be better to still generate the top 20 list but rather link to review pages only? (to avoid too many affiliate links on one single page).
Affiliate Marketing | | Gamer070 -
Sub domains or micro sites
Hi All I am setting up a series of affiliate sites; each site will focus on 1 category of product and there will be no cross over (i.e. no 2 sites will promote the same type of product). I'm setting up approximately 40 and they will all share the same domain: product followed by brand name.co.uk. Because of the numbers I intend to get a dedicated server and create a 'parent' website which I was going to use as a blog to promote the individual sites. My question is: should I set them up as micro sites, or should I set them up as sub domains? Wanted to know which is the best method from an SEO point of view as all sites will be hosted and owned collectively so I appreciate that the link building between each site will be limited. Thanks!
Affiliate Marketing | | danielparry0