Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Links On Expired Domains
-
Does anybody know if a link on an expired domain affects your SEO?
I'm just asking because the SEO agency we used before used to create websites and then link to our company - very spammy.
We have since ditched this agecny, however they wanted an extortionate amount to remove these links. Therefore, we decided to wait until these domains expired and then the links wouldn't exist.
However, I am now completing a link audit and some of these sites are still appearing in the results (obtained from Link Research Tools) but I cannot access the links because the domains have expired.
Can anyone help?
-
If all of the domains are not expired you can use the disavow tool as well. That should be your first course in a situation like this, especially when someone is trying to extort you of bad links. If you disavow them, google does not penalize you for them and drops them out of your backlink profile.
-
Hi Brian
If the domain has expired, it should only be a matter of time before Google recrawls the page/domain and sees that the link is no longer present, therefore discounting the link from your link profile.
You could have a look and see if this has happened by typing into your address bar (if using Chrome) either:
cache:example.com
site:example.comThe first one will check to see if the URL is cached and the second one if it is indexed. If a cached version of the page no longer exists, the link has almost certainly been discounted, whereas if the domain is no longer indexed it would be safe to assume that the link will be discounted soon by Google as well.
I hope this helps - sorry to hear of your previous agency resorting to such backhanded tactics.
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
-
Losing referrer data on http link that redirects to an https site when on an https site. Is this typical or is something else going on here?
I am trying to resolve a referral data issue. Our client noticed that their referrals from one of their sites to another had dropped to almost nothing from being their top referrer. The referring site SiteA which is an HTTPs site, held a link to SiteB, which is also an HTTPs site, so there should be no loss, however the link to SiteB on SiteA had the HTTP protocol. When we changed the link to the HTTPs protocol, the referrals started flowing in. Is this typical? If the 301 redirect is properly in place for SiteB, why would we lose the referral data?
Reporting & Analytics | | Velir0 -
Redirecting one domain to another using utm tags
I have two live websites, which have both been live for over 10 years, so we have plenty of backlinks to both...domain1.com & domain2.com. Domain 1 and all urls is being merged into domain2.com. So 301 redirects will be setup for every page of the site....domain1.com/abc-1234/ to > domain2.com/abc-1234/ In Google analytics for domain2.com we want to be able to see which visits we have received as a result of a redirect from domain1.com. It is possible to see these visits that come in via organic, referrals and social etc, as those will come to us with the referral as domain1.com. However, with direct traffic, i.e. if someone types domain1.com into their search bar, these visits will be assigned as direct and we are not able to tell in GA if those users have typed in domain2.com, or domain1.com to get to our webpage. There are some suggestions in forums of adding utm_source tracking to all redirects (and add canonicals to those urls pointing to the non utm_source version), but my concern is that Google is going to have to go through one extra step to reach the page on the redirected domain. So without the utm source code Google will follow this route
Reporting & Analytics | | Sayers
domain1.com/123/ to domain2.com/123/ With the utm source code Google will follow this route
domain.com/123/ to domain2.com/123/?utm_source... then see's canonical, so moves to domain2.com/123/ So essentially I am giving Google one extra step to follow before it gets to the equivalent page on the new site. Is this an issue, and/or are there any other ways to track this redirection without adding extra parameters to the url?0 -
Does traffic coming from Adwords increase overall Domain Authority or Page Rank?
If I'm setting up an Adwords campaign, will setting my homepage as the landing page boost my domain rank? and will the Page Rank of the landing page get boosted because of the high click rate coming from the Adwords campaign?
Reporting & Analytics | | s2bkevin0 -
Lost rankings after disavowing links
About two months ago, I received an unnatural inbound links message from Google. Then I disavowed 58 (the worst ones) and now I can see that right after the date I submitted my disavow file I'm losing rankings. What would you suggest? I don't really want to revoke my disavow file because it has totally bad links. I have this idea to build 58 links from high quality sites (instead of the 58 I disavowed). Do you think it'll work faster (if at all) or I just need to remove my disavow file?
Reporting & Analytics | | VinceWicks0 -
Google Analytics for multiple languages on multiple domains
Hi folks A quick question in regards to setting up Google Analytics for a website with multiple languages on multiple domains. The domains that needs to be tracked are: www.example.com -> English www.example.se -> Swedish www.example.dk -> Danish To my best knowledge this can be acheived in Google Analytids using 3 different setups: Different accounts Different properties Profiles What would you guys consider the best approach?
Reporting & Analytics | | Resultify
Pros and cons? Have a great day Fredrik0 -
Should you get a new Google Analytics account if your site has a new domain after a site redesign/new development?
We recently developed a new site for a client and they have opted to move forward with a domain change. Should we create a new Google Analytics account for the new site?
Reporting & Analytics | | TheOceanAgency0 -
Email campaigns. Should I link to my blog or to my site?
I have a client for who we write and post a daily blog article. The articles are optimized and linked to particular targeted content on his top level site. Now we are going to start e-marketing to his 3000+ website users to announce inventory changes and specials. My question is (from a SE standpoint) are we better off linking the e-mail content to the blog and introducing people to the blog (but adding an additional step for getting to the new inventory. Or are we better off putting a link in the HTML E-mail letter that we send out to both the blog and separately to the inventory section? Just to clarify, we wonder if the search engines would provide some additional authority for the extra blog traffic and thereby build the overall score of the blog & site. We are looking at the e-mail campaigns as a potential opportunity to impact SE scores not just awareness of new inventory. Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | webindustry0 -
Google Analytics: how many visits from country Google domains?
Hello, I manage a site with visitors from many different countries. With Google Analytics, it is normal to see the number of visitors from each search engine. However, I would like to identify the number of visitors from each Google-search contry domain. How many visitors from Google.com? How many from Google.co.uk. And from Google.co.zm? And so on. Anybody knows if this is possible and if yes, how can it be done? Thank you in advance, Dario
Reporting & Analytics | | Darioz0