Picked up domain for PBN: already used

You better recheck the links. If they were any good, it is highly unlikely the original owner would have let it go.

Also probably want to make sure it is indexed. About the only time i have seen people let PBN sites go is if they lost links or they were deindexed.

Thanks for your reply. The links are definitely good, if not awesome. Felt kinda strange that the previous owner dropped it indeed. Did a little research on him: his SEO company doens't exist anymore. Perhaps he moved on to something else or something happend.

How can I make sure that the domain will be indexed and not appear on some sort of blocklist at Google?

You can check if it is indexed by typing in site:http://www. domainname.com in the Google search bar.

As for it being on a blacklist by Google, there is no way to know.

Having picked up a few of these before it's definitely possible that you got lucky and a decent domain previously used in a network is still legit. Many networks owners aren't all that careful with expiry dates etc. or hit some kind of trouble where they just simply drop good domains - or they simply move onto other things.

Like Mike says, check if it gets indexed but that still won't necessarily show if it's penalised in any way. After that, it's trial and error. Point it at something to test before you point it at something you don't want to poison. You could also try to rank it for keywords it would have been associated with in the past and see how well it does. Not likely to be very easy even with the lowest competition keywords if there is a big penalty on it. Failing all that (and if it's worth the effort due to money paid) you could ask for Google to reconsider any penalties as you're a new owner. Of course, that will put you straight back on their radar, so you'll have to play it casual and legitimate for a while. (probably exactly how a good network site should be run, anyway!)

If the domain isn't indexed it doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad domain. Put the domain on a cheap monthly host & see If you can index & rank a page on the PBN site. My point is to keep the new PBN domain quarantined & away from all your existing good domains until you can prove the new domain is safe.

If the domain been used for SEO before it is most probably penalized or marked as spam already.
In this case it might be an "honey trap" that will ruin your entire SEO campaign.

Thank you all for your answers. I will add some more (legit-looking) content on it and just wait untill it gets indexed (hopefully). It was a good lesson nonetheless, I'm extensively checking every domain that I come across now and I've filtered already about 5 domains out of my to-buy list because they were used for PBN's before.

I was also wondering if someone encountered those weird Chinese/Japanese/Thai pages that sometimes come up at archive.org. I have had this multiple times and I'm not really sure what to do with it. First I thought it was a regular parked-page that got translated into Chinese/Japanese somehow because of the Archive server location but it could also be some kind of weird super-simple-looking PBN. Most of the domains got snatched right after they were dropped by the original owner but usually the weird looking site only exist for 1 year. Got some images here:

Image 1: The H1 text translates into: "Click here If you look for Musashi engineering!" - Links translate into: "Musashi Engineering"



Image 2: Text above the image translate into: "Takeshi Aiko baseball
Site Map Aiko Takeshi baseball batting technique improvement - short-term progress Teaching - Review How to improve dramatically at-bat in the shortest of Takeshi Aiko" (it's a baseball related domainname, looks like someone actually took the trouble of finding relevant content, PBN maybe?)



Thanks in advance!

Dude if its Chinese sites all my bets are off. They are into some serious spam and stuff. I rarely touch them (yep sometimes)

Haha I'm running away as fast as I can!! Thanks for the tips guys, really helps a lot! I got two last questions: first one is concerning the backlink profile of the PBN site. It's one of the first things I look at and I often try to analyze whether it looks natural or not. I was wondering if you guys would buy domains (with a nice PA + DA) but with almost all the backlinks coming from directory pages or startpages*.

* Haven't seen a lot of those on the "American side of the internet" but here, in The Netherlands, they're really quite common and often are an easy way to get backlinks. Example: De Katwijk Startpagina - Alles over Katwijk en omgeving!

Other question is concerning using multiple languages in the PBN. I maintain a few Dutch websites aswell, would you guys link from your .com (with all English content) to a Dutch .nl page? Or write a random post on your PBN site in another language?

Lol, you didn't really buy that did you?

Nothing wrong with that domain to me.

Do you think Chinese people look at English language domains, and say to each other. Stay clear of that kind of crap. Those Americans and Indians are into all kinds of crazy ass spam.

Ik vaak vind zo NL domeinen met uberhoog DA/PA maar alle backlinks komen van 1-2 domeinen. Zo als je heb gezien.

De eerste keer heb ik een mooi gezien, ik kocht die en een nieuwe PBN site gecreerd....MAAR hij werkt toch niet! Geen echt linkjuice en geen effect.

Mijn advies...let op...er zijn nog veel goede .nl domeinen in de wildernis!