I lucked out with an already aged domain?

About a month and a half ago I bought a domain related to a game site I was gonna make as a side project. I won't say the game but the domain is the game title, gametitlehere.org

I set up the skeleton of the site, set up the layout, and about 50% of the pages (I'll end up with a couple hundred pages at least when it's finished) then just kind of set it aside while I worked on my main sites.

The other day I thought I'd do some work on it again, and while I was doing serp research on my other sites, I decided to look into my game site. Keep in mind I have no content and have done no backlinking or anything. I found about 60 backlinks to my domain, there were more but many show as deleted, I clicked a few. It was people talking about my site on legit forums, linking to it in their signatures. These were real discussions, not automated or spammy forum posting. I got excited, and went and checked the domain age. According to SEOquake, it shows an age of November 27, 2002. PR of 0.

That's what really confused me. The game was released 2008, and the official games website has an age of 2007.
How is it my site shows an age of 2002? Did someone really buy the domain that far in advanced? It is one game in a series of games, the first that came out are quite old so it's entirely possible that someone did buy them that far in advanced.

Also I was under the impression that an aged domain would be sold in auction, and worth a bit more than the domain regardless of rank or PR? I just bought it like any regular domain.

So did I luck out, and will the domain age stick for my site?

Make sure you add the domain to Google Webmasters so you can see all the old URLs that are being linked to. Redirect these pages to your homepage (or your money page).

Either that or redirect all 404s to the homepage.

Maybe they bought the domain from someone who was using it for some other non-game purpose.

DeskCoder said:

Make sure you add the domain to Google Webmasters so you can see all the old URLs that are being linked to. Redirect these pages to your homepage (or your money page).

Either that or redirect all 404s to the homepage.

Click to expand...

You're right, I forgot to add it. Just did, and its showing no data available. I assume it may take some time for it to update?

You know sometimes game news do come a long time before normal. Take Doom 3 for example, it took them 10 years to get it out. So it might happen to your domain too.

have you checked the wayback to see if there was ever any content on the site....if there was help yourself to that as well.

More likely it is a dropped domain from a user which forgot to / didn't renew it.

Those domains are generally sold in auction but it depends on the registrar.

I believe you have bought it soon after it was released as an available domain as they should be reset

abysse said:

More likely it is a dropped domain from a user which forgot to / didn't renew it.

Those domains are generally sold in auction but it depends on the registrar.

I believe you have bought it soon after it was released as an available domain as they should be reset

Click to expand...

They must have dropped it soon before I purchased it, the newest backlinks I could find were from just a couple months ago.

I checked them out on the wayback machine, looks like they were just using it as a 301 redirect to another game site which isn't up anymore either.

Might worth to get that other old website , maybe it is another dropped domain.

By the way, i believe i already told you, but what a wonderful nickname you have .

abysse said:

By the way, i believe i already told you, but what a wonderful nickname you have .

Click to expand...

Likewise!