How to Investigate a Domain’s History Before Purchase
A domain forms the first impression of your company to visitors and potential customers. Therefore, choosing a good name is not just a formality – it is a decision that affects the entire future path of your business.
Today the Internet is literally overflowing with websites with each having a unique name. How to choose a domain that it is easy to pronounce, well remembered fully corresponds to your brand and at the same time is not busy?
In most cases, buying an existing domain is the best solution. However, before entering the transaction and handing over your money, it is crucial to check the domain registration history.
Experts recommend starting by verifying the owner with a reliable service such as Namecheap Whois. However, there are many more factors to consider as outlined in this article.
Domain History Matters
Before purchasing a real estate property you should of course check the facility. If you want to avoid unpleasant surprises after buying a domain, you need to do the same.
Essentially, a domain is a digital footprint left on the global web by the previous owner. If you purchase a name previously used for fraudulent purposes, spreading spam or banned content, your web project is doomed to failure.
Trust from both potential customers and search engines plays an important role in your online business. Therefore, never buy domains blindly – always conduct a thorough background check as explained below.
Helpful Tips for Domain History Lookup
So, legal compliance, reputation maintenance and protection from potential risks are three important reasons why you should always check the history of a name before buying it. Below, you’ll find some useful tips to help you do a thorough check so you can ultimately make the right choice.
Find Out How It Has Been Used Historically
Fortunately, there are many tools available to you today to learn everything you could possibly want to know about a particular domain. Just type the name into the search box and click a button – and voila, the whole history is before your eyes.
For example, you can find out the name of the previous owner, date of registration, changes made and much more. Pay attention to any abnormal activity with the domain such as transfers, fraud, penalties from search engines and so on.
Check Content in the Web Archive
Let’s assume that everything is fine with the owner and transfers of the domain. However, what about the quality and type of content posted on the sites that used the domain name you are interested in?
This is where tools like Wayback Machine come to the rescue. By utilising them, you will have access to snapshots of web pages where you can see what content has been published previously.
The main advantage here is that you can find out what the quality of the content associated with a domain is. In addition, you can identify potential problems that will prevent your business from growing in such a competitive environment as the modern internet is today.
Trademark Check
Imagine that the wonderful domain you purchased has become the cause of serious litigation resulting in major financial and reputational losses. To avoid all this, you should conduct a thorough trademark check.
Today you can easily check the links to any trademark using special online services. Do not neglect this check so that your great business idea will turn into a prosperous web project.
Learn How Facebook Treats a Domain
According to Statista, the social media platform has about three billion active users each month. Given its huge reach, the domain name you are looking for mustn’t be blocked or flagged by this giant social media platform.
Facebook is extremely vigilant about its reputation and therefore does not allow itself to link to domains involved in fraudulent activity or spamming. Use Facebook’s specialised tool to check the status of the domain you are looking at.
Whether the Name is Blocked by AdSense?
Many of those who decide to launch a website want to use it to monetise traffic. AdSense is a powerful tool that cleanses the global network from web projects engaged in fraud and distributing spam content.
If your chosen domain is on the list of blocked by AdSense, you can forget about the monetisation potential of your website. The presence of a domain in the AdSense blacklist indicates that the previous owners violated search engine policies.
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Has a Digital Name Been Sold Previously?
Some internet entrepreneurs buy domains to resell them for a profit. If you are one of them, find out if the domain has been sold before and what was its price.
Knowing the historical price will help you estimate the potential profit from reselling the name. For instance, using the NameBio service, you will be able to track the price of a domain since 2007.
Used Domain Can Be Key to Your Success
Before you buy a domain, assess its real cost. There are several important criteria that will help you determine the real value of a digital name:
· Length and ease of spelling/remembering. Typically, short and easy-to-remember domains that are relevant to a specific industry are expensive. Variants like food.com or store.inc are extremely rare on the market and can cost a fortune.
· Keywords included. Give preference to a domain that provides easier search engine optimisation by containing important keywords relevant to your niche. This way you can get more organic traffic with less investment in SEO.
· TLD. Being recognisable worldwide, .com domains are undoubtedly valued very highly. However, don’t forget about the demand for other domains in certain niches such as IT or AI, like .io and .ai.
· The age of the domain plays an important role. If you choose a domain registered many years ago and used for a reputable website, that’s a big success. The truth is that search engines always give more credence to older domains thus providing you with an SEO advantage.
· Potential commercial value. Although unique and branded names cost more, their usefulness in building your strong brand can’t be overstated.
After all, buying a domain is something akin to investing in property. So, always evaluate a name in terms of potential future returns rather than current value, while carefully analysing the domain registration history.
