Google's update on Expired domains

This is their statement:

Expired domain abuse​

Occasionally, expired domains are purchased and repurposed with the primary intention of boosting search ranking of low-quality or unoriginal content. This can mislead users into thinking the new content is part of the older site, which may not be the case. Expired domains that are purchased and repurposed with the intention of boosting the search ranking of low-quality content are now considered spam.

Search helps people with billions of questions every day, but there will always be areas where we can improve. We’ll continue to work hard at keeping low-quality content on Search to low levels, and showing more information created to help people.

Source: https://blog.google/products/search/google-search-update-march-2024/

So my interpretation of this, is that they are cracking down on propping up low quality content with Expired domains...

Fine then, no more fucking about lads. Stop 301'ing to viagra ads.

But what this also tells me, is that the use of expired domains to prop up high quality or cornerstone content, is still allowed. Right?

So this is still a legit strategy IMO. Anyone agree or disagree?

And whos to say that high quality cornerstone content couldnt legitimately find a place to encorporate your low quality Viagra links right?

Or am I missing something?

Sounds to me exactly as you've put it brother, no more redirect whoring piggybacking off of past successes of an expired domain. Which is great news because now maybe leechers will stop buying all the clean, short, 1996 OLD expired domains and leave them for peeps like me who will take that diamond and make it shine, not redirect the users to yet another Viagra pharmacy with uber low quality contents.

Finally one you can read, agree, see point, be glad it at least works in the users favor once a while!

I always thought every single UHQ old old expired was bought up for the purpose of 301ing it, and usually it was! Hoping this changes things slightly so people like this leave the business to people who care more about content of the site to build traffic, rather than hoping to show up in front of all the other leechers running the same Viagra ads that are 301 from like Creatashop.com or something like that.

This is great news if you ask me. People will literally buy an expired domain on swimming and repurpose it for dog or cannabis, etc. Totally unrelated niches.

I seriously wish they get this right

It started to rank with its old domain name and backlinks in the last month. Even though there is irrelevant content on the site, I have sites that rank with the content of the old site. Very interesting, the situation has completely changed.

datapower said:

Sounds to me exactly as you've put it brother, no more redirect whoring piggybacking off of past successes of an expired domain. Which is great news because now maybe leechers will stop buying all the clean, short, 1996 OLD expired domains and leave them for peeps like me who will take that diamond and make it shine, not redirect the users to yet another Viagra pharmacy with uber low quality contents.

Finally one you can read, agree, see point, be glad it at least works in the users favor once a while!

I always thought every single UHQ old old expired was bought up for the purpose of 301ing it, and usually it was! Hoping this changes things slightly so people like this leave the business to people who care more about content of the site to build traffic, rather than hoping to show up in front of all the other leechers running the same Viagra ads that are 301 from like Creatashop.com or something like that.

Click to expand...

Good point and well said. I also totally agree. This could then become a solid strategy and give us the opportunity to actually rank for competitive keywords.

Pam Danny said:

This is great news if you ask me. People will literally buy an expired domain on swimming and repurpose it for dog or cannabis, etc. Totally unrelated niches.

I seriously wish they get this right

Click to expand...

Agreed

ElevateMarketing said:

incorporating low-quality links into high-quality content may still be seen as manipulating search rankings and could potentially be penalize

Click to expand...

Ya, but we're talking about redirecting high quality expired domains, to high quality content.

It looks like the blackhatters continue to bid on the expired domain though.

People shouldn't really be surprised that this is happening now.

Whole industries and massive multimillion-dollar services have been built on expired domains.

It really is surprising that it took this long for Google to catch up to the rest of the SEO industry.

Still, this is a very important lesson because the recent destruction of formerly high-ranking sites due to their overreliance on expired domains and leveraging the SEO equity of such domains is ultimately good news for the industry.

It tells us that we should be focusing on high-quality content.

We shouldn't be focusing on AI or other shortcuts.

And guess what!

Expired domains, when they are used PBNs, devalue SEO for the rest of the industry. Why?

Because it's a shortcut!

And when people get over reliant on a shortcut, people get sloppy.

While there are high-quality PBNs out there that are manually written and formatted in such a way that they get actual traffic, let's get real here for a second.

Most of the remaining PBNs are complete and total garbage.

They exist solely to sell links or to boost the links of target sites in their network.

Let's not kid ourselves.

So this recent penalty, both on the AI content front as well as on the expired domain front, should be a wake-up call.

There are no shortcuts.

To succeed in this and any other industry, people still have to put in work.

If that is your mindset and you're willing to put in work and your work shows it, you will be rewarded.

Maybe not immediately but you will get what's coming to you.

So let's just learn from this.

I think it's a race to the bottom.

If people still are thinking that they can snatch an awesome expired domain and then still leverage its SEO equity, that ship has sailed.

Those days are gone.

Focus instead on building quality.

As it says in a very famous book, if you build your house on solid bedrock, your house is going to stand forever.

But if you build your house on sand and it starts to rain, you're gonna lose your house.

Why should building a website be any different from building a house?

Why should building a business be any different?

Do you see where I am coming from?

Build on a solid foundation of quality, and this of course means knowing your customers and giving them what they need.

blackbeans said:

People shouldn't really be surprised that this is happening now.

Whole industries and massive multimillion-dollar services have been built on expired domains.

It really is surprising that it took this long for Google to catch up to the rest of the SEO industry.

Still, this is a very important lesson because the recent destruction of formerly high-ranking sites due to their overreliance on expired domains and leveraging the SEO equity of such domains is ultimately good news for the industry.

It tells us that we should be focusing on high-quality content.

We shouldn't be focusing on AI or other shortcuts.

And guess what!

Expired domains, when they are used PBNs, devalue SEO for the rest of the industry. Why?

Because it's a shortcut!

And when people get over reliant on a shortcut, people get sloppy.

While there are high-quality PBNs out there that are manually written and formatted in such a way that they get actual traffic, let's get real here for a second.

Most of the remaining PBNs are complete and total garbage.

They exist solely to sell links or to boost the links of target sites in their network.

Let's not kid ourselves.

So this recent penalty, both on the AI content front as well as on the expired domain front, should be a wake-up call.

There are no shortcuts.

To succeed in this and any other industry, people still have to put in work.

If that is your mindset and you're willing to put in work and your work shows it, you will be rewarded.

Maybe not immediately but you will get what's coming to you.

So let's just learn from this.

I think it's a race to the bottom.

If people still are thinking that they can snatch an awesome expired domain and then still leverage its SEO equity, that ship has sailed.

Those days are gone.

Focus instead on building quality.

As it says in a very famous book, if you build your house on solid bedrock, your house is going to stand forever.

But if you build your house on sand and it starts to rain, you're gonna lose your house.

Why should building a website be any different from building a house?

Why should building a business be any different?

Do you see where I am coming from?

Build on a solid foundation of quality, and this of course means knowing your customers and giving them what they need.

Click to expand...

The ship hasnt sailed for leveraging SEO equity from expired domains. Its only sailed for low quality content doing this.

Well, we are used to overriding the rules. We shall find as way out