Being one of the top expired domain as well as expired Web 2.0 sellers outside of BHW, I can tell you one thing for sure from my experience. Though many might disagree with me but PA is actually one of the least updated metrics nowadays and they often remain same. I personally find Ahrefs perhaps the most frequently updated followed by Majestic and then comes Moz. One of the best part about Majestic TF CF compared to Moz PA DA is that while the former gives more importance to contextual links, the later i.e. DA etc. is more based on no. of links. For example, in my expired domain lists, from around 10K DA 15+ available expired domains, I hardly get a dozen or less with TF 15+. So, TF is far more difficult to find compared to Moz and I personally prefer it more both for my own work as well as for selling it off.
And the most important part is neither TF CF nor PA DA. At times, I have seen many domains with quality links from CNN and BBC with low DA and TF as these services do not even detect these links at times. But keep in mind that Google has probably detected them all and knows all those links. So, just the stats are not important. The quality of backlinks are also important. I can give you 5 domains free right now with TF CF 20+ if needed and with spam backlink profiles. But will those domains work that well? I highly doubt it. Similarly, around 50% of the high quality domains have either been used as Chinese spam sites or PBNs in the past and I can say that based on my personal experience.
Here is the method to check the quality of a PBN domain that you purchase.
1. Check PA DA TF CF.. the higher the better (with CF/TF ratio of less than 2 preferably). I also provide www TF CF at times which is also fine and it is just that www needs to be used while creating the PBN. I personally prefer TF CF 15+.
2. I personally prefer referring domains more than 10. Although higher the better but check that there are not thousands of RD as those might be spam links. Quality real links are important.
3. Check the anchor texts in Ahrefs and Majestic. The anchor texts should ideally be diverse with no Chinese etc. anchors if possible.
4. Check screenshots.com for the history of snapshots of the website. If there is change in the history and especially Chinese site in an English domain name, I personally let it go. Also if there are visible signs of PBN in the past, I let it go.
5. Check archive.org for the history of the website. I check at least one cached version of every year. Again if there significant changes and possible Chinese spam or PBN in the past, I do not take it.
So, my filters are very strict and I normally get the best for me and my clients to whom I sell. This is the proper and best method of checking the quality of a PBN domain. I see people selling off Chinese spam domains, previous PBN domains and all sorts of expired domains.
Being available is the Google cache is NOT important. If the website is clean and has got good links, it would return back to Google index within a week of placing unique content. Do not go just for low quality domains in the Google index.
Having said that, I would also like to add that I recently have a lot of customers who request for niche domains and do not need TF CF. So, I would recommend only PA DA in such niche cases and nothing else.
Make sure to research properly before building the PBN. A quality PBN takes time to build and so, you must make sure that the domains are worth the time invested.
