Building backlinks to a domain before you register it?

Just had a thought and I'm wanting to see what you guys think.

Has anyone tried building links to an unregistered domain, let the links get crawled / indexed and then proceed to buy the domain after some time?

Would any over optimisation penalties be avoided as links were built before the domain even existed. Or would the same thing apply as per normal when building links to a domain?

Would the domain be quicker to index by doing this, would it immediately be penalized upon registration, etc?

All very interesting. Anyone try something like this before?

Google would know the status of the domain, like pending delete for example. I can't say what they do with that data in regards of links whether that's a check or not but they will know the current status of it.

Not sure why you want to do this.

When you speak of avoiding "over optimization" penalties say like Penguin, just because you built the links before you registered domain does not mean you will be immune from the filter.

Once you register the domain and Google connects the links to them you would be exposed to both the pluses and minuses of such a strategy.

It's waste of time.
You can't speed-up SEO process.

Definitely a waste, don't see any advantages from doing this.

As stated before, Google tracks the status of the domain.

Furthermore, if the domain is pending delete, never regged it will be useless to backlink to it because it has no content -> why would a "site" with no content get backlinks?! ->red flags

There is a possibility that the domain has a website built on it but does it give out the propper on-page signals required to rank for the terms YOU want? For example if the site's name is assaultrifles.com and it ranks for "assault rifles", and you build links for "m4a1 rifles", you'll probably end up throwing money on backlinks without ROI.

So be smart and don't rush it (as many have said before).

1st kw strategy
2nd on-page
3rd off-page

etc.

The short of it: Yes people have thought of it; No it does not work.

it won't be of any use... total waste of time and energy....

The problem with that is if someone happens to snatch the domain before you do. So all that work for nothing.