Did I buy a penalized domain name ?

DO067

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Hi there,

I recently bought an expired domain name on GoDaddy. The metrics were correct for the price and I didn't see any spam issues with it (at the beginning ...)

So I built a new site, I added the GA tracker and I have started to monitor the site on the Search Console and what I've seen is strange. Despite the fact that I have no manual penalty from Google, no page are indexed. I know that it can take some time to rank but there is no any result on the SERP, the only method to see the site is with the command "site:mywebsite.com" !

I think that the domain has been penalized by Google in the past (not in the sandbox as I can find the pages with the command "site: ..."). So my questions :

- How can be sure that the site is penalized ?
- How sort it out ?

Thanks for your help :)
 
There's really no way of knowing if and why you got penalized.
However, generally it's due to one of the below factors:
- Penalized domain
- Bad hosting IP
- Bad content
- Randomly not indexed (happens all the time)

- How can be sure that the site is penalized ?

You can't.

- How sort it out ?

You can't.

Or well, you can mess around with a different host/different content etc. to see if you can pinpoint the exact issue and thus solve it.
 
It is pretty clear that I did a mistake buying this domain. I just check the site with trustedsource(dot)org and it says :

- Malicious Sites
- Spam URLs
- High Risk

So according to your saying, I can't easily recover from that ?
 
It is pretty clear that I did a mistake buying this domain. I just check the site with trustedsource(dot)org and it says :

- Malicious Sites
- Spam URLs
- High Risk

So according to your saying, I can't easily recover from that ?

Everything is possible but IMO you should just forget about the domain and move on. Trying to cleanup a bad reputation domain is probably not gonna be worth your time.

I'd consider the cost of the domain as paid tuition :)
 
You can test it, from google web master tool, fetch a couple of pages and submit to index, wait an hour or so and type the urls into google search to see they'll show up. (usually, they should show up immediately) If they do and stick for a few days you're all good to go. If they don't then there is something wrong.
 
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If there isn't a manual penalty, then the domain isn't penalized. Period. Add more quality content, god knows what you put on the site and whether or not you are trying to index "hello world" - Yes, I've met such people.

If it still doesn't get indexed, then try to index your pages via GWT, since you have it already installed.
 
It's important to check the backlink profile because if it has been abused and spammed your metrics is useless no matter how good it is.

Before buying an expired domain check if it has a good quality backlink, check in whois history if it a big gap before it was pick-up again or it has been drop for several times. Also check in wayback machine if it has been abused or had spammed keywords like loans, pharma, gambling, and adults terms like porn.
 
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