PBN: What metrics do you use to see if you want to register a domain?

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I'm curious as to what kind of metrics and data of domains that you're interested in when looking to register domains for your pbn. Such as minimum of TF, CF, DA, PA, external backlinks etc.
#domain #metrics #pbn #register
  • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
    Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

    I'm curious as to what kind of metrics and data of domains that you're interested in when looking to register domains for your pbn. Such as minimum of TF, CF, DA, PA, external backlinks etc.
    I never register a domain based on any of those metrics. They are not always accurate. You could lose your ass if you are registering domains based on metrics. The only thing I use any metrics for are to sift through lists of available domains to decide which ones I want to take a closer look at.
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    • Profile picture of the author TKzTechnology
      Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

      I never register a domain based on any of those metrics. They are not always accurate. You could lose your ass if you are registering domains based on metrics. The only thing I use any metrics for are to sift through lists of available domains to decide which ones I want to take a closer look at.
      Alright. What are you looking for regarding referring backlinks? Non-spammy of course, but do you have a minimum amount of links a domain must have before you want to register it?
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      • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
        Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

        Alright. What are you looking for regarding referring backlinks? Non-spammy of course, but do you have a minimum amount of links a domain must have before you want to register it?
        Minimum number? No.

        I evaluate domains on a risk-based pricing model.

        Fewer links doesn't mean I won't buy it. It just means I'm not going to be willing to pay much for it. If I find a domain that only has 4-5 really good links, but they look like links that might stick, and I can get it for $50 or less, I'll take a chance on something like that. If it is in an auction and it hits $300+, no freaking way.
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  • Profile picture of the author yukon
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    Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

    I'm curious as to what kind of metrics and data of domains that you're interested in when looking to register domains for your pbn. Such as minimum of TF, CF, DA, PA, external backlinks etc.

    I would never use those DIY metrics and to be honest I wouldn't take anyone else serious that thought those were worthwhile. No offense, I just know that stuff is hype.

    As far as domains, I'm looking for relevancy. The reason I'm looking for relevancy is for both direct traffic and followed links. I would rather have links from traffic that is somewhat interested in the niche rather than off the wall traffic that could care less. For SEO links I'm looking for followed links mainly plus relevancy. Not necessarily the exact same niche but relevant. Example If I'm selling car stereos I would be ok with a domain/blog about new cars, old cars, trucks, etc...
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    • Profile picture of the author TKzTechnology
      Originally Posted by yukon View Post

      I would never use those DIY metrics and to be honest I wouldn't take anyone else serious that thought those were worthwhile. No offense, I just know that stuff is hype.

      As far as domains, I'm looking for relevancy. The reason I'm looking for relevancy is for both direct traffic and followed links. I would rather have links from traffic that is somewhat interested in the niche rather than off the wall traffic that could care less. For SEO links I'm looking for followed links mainly plus relevancy. Not necessarily the exact same niche but relevant. Example If I'm selling car stereos I would be ok with a domain/blog about new cars, old cars, trucks, etc...
      Thanks for your reply. I understand your relevancy point, but I suppose you must be looking out for some kind of metrics when buying domains.. Because I don't think you will get a whole lot of direct traffic when you buy an old domain. I'm sorry if I got you wrong, but it kinda sounds like you get the domains to get traffic from them instead of using them to push ranks?
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      • Profile picture of the author yukon
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        Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

        Thanks for your reply. I understand your relevancy point, but I suppose you must be looking out for some kind of metrics when buying domains.. Because I don't think you will get a whole lot of direct traffic when you buy an old domain. I'm sorry if I got you wrong, but it kinda sounds like you get the domains to get traffic from them instead of using them to push ranks?
        No, I'm also looking at link profiles, keyword anchor-text (relevant vs spam), page titles on backlink pages, supporting backlinks for backlink pages, Wayback history.







        Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

        Because I don't think you will get a whole lot of direct traffic when you buy an old domain.
        That's not true at all. If a domain has a backlink profile generating traffic today and the domain is dropped tomorrow the same domain links will be generating traffic next month/year.

        That's exactly why a lot of domains are parked and showing ads, because a lot of old dropped domains still have backlinks generating direct traffic ($$). Parked domains all by itself is a whole niche ($$).
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        • Profile picture of the author TKzTechnology
          Originally Posted by yukon View Post

          No, I'm also looking at link profiles, keyword anchor-text (relevant vs spam), page titles on backlink pages, supporting backlinks for backlink pages, Wayback history.

          That's not true at all. If a domain has a backlink profile generating traffic today and the domain is dropped tomorrow the same domain links will be generating traffic next month/year.

          That's exactly why a lot of domains are parked and showing ads, because a lot of old dropped domains still have backlinks generating direct traffic ($$). Parked domains all by itself is a whole niche ($$).
          Alright, I just got my first domain set up (18TF/25CF) which is relevant for my niche as well, and im going to buy some extra domains soon once they're available for registration.. Can I ask, what do you do about content? Because I've heard that some people only make like 1 post, and that's it. But that sounds pretty dumb, isn't the point of a pbn to make it look legit? And what do you use when it comes to hosting, vps hosting or hosting on popular sites?

          Thanks.
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          • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
            Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

            Alright, I just got my first domain set up (18TF/25CF) which is relevant for my niche as well, and im going to buy some extra domains soon once they're available for registration.. Can I ask, what do you do about content? Because I've heard that some people only make like 1 post, and that's it. But that sounds pretty dumb, isn't the point of a pbn to make it look legit? And what do you use when it comes to hosting, vps hosting or hosting on popular sites?

            Thanks.

            Hire a writer and get some pages created. I would never do the 1 page idea. You are right. That is dumb.

            A separate shared hosting account for each site should be sufficient.
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            • Profile picture of the author TKzTechnology
              Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

              Hire a writer and get some pages created. I would never do the 1 page idea. You are right. That is dumb.

              A separate shared hosting account for each site should be sufficient.
              Yeah, but whats your view on shared hosting vs. vps hosting, because lets say you have 20+ pbns, that will become expensive after a while. A buddy of mine told me vps hosting is better/cheaper.
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              • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

                . A buddy of mine told me vps hosting is better/cheaper.
                Unless you are doing something special its pretty easy for Google to see your sites are all on one server. if you go over to webhosting talk you will find hosts cheap. On 20 domains if you can't make back the money on income then you probably need a better monetization plan
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                • Profile picture of the author TKzTechnology
                  Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

                  Unless you are doing something special its pretty easy for Google to see your sites are all on one server. if you go over to webhosting talk you will find hosts cheap. On 20 domains if you can't make back the money on income then you probably need a better monetization plan
                  I am not talking about having all the domains hosted on the same vps server, but buy multiple vps because they are cheaper ($2.50 per vps monthly) which has different a,b,c classes as well.
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                  • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
                    Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

                    I am not talking about having all the domains hosted on the same vps server, but buy multiple vps because they are cheaper ($2.50 per vps monthly) which has different a,b,c classes as well.
                    Google can see well beyond Class Ips. Thats old tech. Any VPS selling for $2.50 a months is dividing a single server into multiple virtual servers (same box). there are a variety of ways google can spot this but the easiest red flag to see is that all your sites will be in the same datacenter.

                    If you want to go what way its your call but the only way to really be safe and not have a pattern is to have your site on multiple boxes and in different locations and datacenters. You get that with using various hosts and in many cases for $2.00 a month or less.

                    to be honest the cost isn't a big issue. the greater hassle is managing all the accounts. I did at one point solve that by getting a VPS with WHMCS installed and white listed all my reseller IP addresses. then I could handle everything including installs of new domains from one spot. Other solutions at the time could handle various sites after WP or something else was installed - only that did everything whether I was using WP or not and would install WP on its own.
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              • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
                Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

                Yeah, but whats your view on shared hosting vs. vps hosting, because lets say you have 20+ pbns, that will become expensive after a while. A buddy of mine told me vps hosting is better/cheaper.
                That entirely depends on how open you want to be about what you are creating. If you are creating a bunch of domains linking to your site or sites and you don't care whether or not Google knows that they are all owned by the same entity, then sure, just use a single VPS host.

                For example, I don't believe NBC would think twice about adding links between NBC.com and MSNBC.com and putting them on the same server or any other entities owned by NBC.

                Even then though, I probably still wouldn't do it that way. Not because of anything search engine related, but just because if they have some sort of technical problem, as many hosts often do, all your sites are going down instead of just one.
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      • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
        Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

        Thanks for your reply. I understand your relevancy point, but I suppose you must be looking out for some kind of metrics when buying domains.. ?
        Of course you have to rely on some metrics not so much the metrics on the domain as the metrics on the links to the domain. The posters above are misleading you as they always do on this subject . There is no way you are ever going to determine the strength of a domain by looking at the links without metrics

        Looking at anchor text, wayback machine and page titles doesn't tell you a single thing about link strength. Thats total and absolute garbage and hog wash. anchor text may tell a story about link spam but a weak page can be non spammy

        Every day non spammy anchor text links are left on sites that have no juice. the wayback machine shows sites that are weak or strong in authority - nothing about link strength.

        Some people trying to sell a course say just look at the links without metrics but that makes absolutely no sense except they are trying to position themselves as gurus.There are trillions of pages on the internet and tens of millions of domains. theres no way you know even 1% of sites out there to know link strength based on that.

        So what do you do? Use plain old common sense

        You have to use what you have. Pagerank is gone as a metric anyone can use. the remaining metrics are at best approximations of link strength. Since none of them can be as solid as Google's own rating (and even that was so far behind not being updated it often wasn't either) you use them all together.

        I use moz to weed out the low liers. Will it miss some? sure as I stated nothing is perfect but practically you need something to eradicate going through tens of thousand or even millions of domains. If you see a site with millions of links or even hundreds of thousands its usually a dead give away of spam worse if the DA shows no exceptional strength. If you go through the backlinks and see all low numbers as well then thats even a better indicator. What are the chances out of tens of thousands of links Moz just missed all the good ones?

        time to move on to the next domain

        When you weed out the junk then Majestic is pretty decent. Again the naysayers will come in with their objections and exceptions but again what are they offering as an alternative? Just look at the links with your bare eyeballs, feel the force and look at the wayback machine? Thats too funny for words.

        Trustflow with all it warts is probably the best we have (I haven't used ahrefs in a long time but they were pretty bad and Moz is known for being gamed easily)

        now the next thing you have to do is know the weakness of these metrics and adjust based on other easily seen factors. I mentioned Moz being able to game with link spam but in a lot of cases you can just look at quantity of links and tell a spammed profile. If a domain really had 250,000 quality links pointing at it heres the thing -

        are you even going to be able to afford it in an auction?

        Way back I used to entertain the idea of finding that one domain everyone else missed. did it happen a few times? Yep but then I added up the hours being spent to find it - not pretty.

        One other thing you can do at least with auctions is piggyback on other people's research. You will miss a few domains (very few these days) but not spend countless hours trying to find the killer domain that no one else has shown any interest in. You are more likely to find a good domain not bid through the roof that only a few people have an interest in than you are to find a good domain NO ONE has shown interest in.

        Probably the best regular deals sources now are dropcatching services with registrars that don't have auctions. better be registered at a few though and even then the catching is so competitive you might still lose out on most
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        • Profile picture of the author MikeFriedman
          Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

          Of course you have to rely on some metrics not so much the metrics on the domain as the metrics on the links to the domain. The posters above are misleading you as they always do on this subject . There is no way you are ever going to determine the strength of a domain by looking at the links without metrics

          Looking at anchor text, wayback machine and page titles doesn't tell you a single thing about link strength. Thats total and absolute garbage and hog wash. anchor text may tell a story about link spam but a weak page can be non spammy

          Every day non spammy anchor text links are left on sites that have no juice. the wayback machine shows sites that are weak or strong in authority - nothing about link strength.

          Some people trying to sell a course say just look at the links without metrics but that makes absolutely no sense except they are trying to position themselves as gurus.There are trillions of pages on the internet and tens of millions of domains. theres no way you know even 1% of sites out there to know link strength based on that.

          So what do you do? Use plain old common sense

          You have to use what you have. Pagerank is gone as a metric anyone can use. the remaining metrics are at best approximations of link strength. Since none of them can be as solid as Google's own rating (and even that was so far behind not being updated it often wasn't either) you use them all together.

          I use moz to weed out the low liers. Will it miss some? sure as I stated nothing is perfect but practically you need something to eradicate going through tens of thousand or even millions of domains. If you see a site with millions of links or even hundreds of thousands its usually a dead give away of spam worse if the DA shows no exceptional strength. If you go through the backlinks and see all low numbers as well then thats even a better indicator. What are the chances out of tens of thousands of links Moz just missed all the good ones?

          time to move on to the next domain

          When you weed out the junk then Majestic is pretty decent. Again the naysayers will come in with their objections and exceptions but again what are they offering as an alternative? Just look at the links with your bare eyeballs, feel the force and look at the wayback machine? Thats too funny for words.

          Trustflow with all it warts is probably the best we have (I haven't used ahrefs in a long time but they were pretty bad and Moz is known for being gamed easily)

          now the next thing you have to do is know the weakness of these metrics and adjust based on other easily seen factors. I mentioned Moz being able to game with link spam but in a lot of cases you can just look at quantity of links and tell a spammed profile. If a domain really had 250,000 quality links pointing at it heres the thing -

          are you even going to be able to afford it in an auction?

          Way back I used to entertain the idea of finding that one domain everyone else missed. did it happen a few times? Yep but then I added up the hours being spent to find it - not pretty.

          One other thing you can do at least with auctions is piggyback on other people's research. You will miss a few domains (very few these days) but not spend countless hours trying to find the killer domain that no one else has shown any interest in. You are more likely to find a good domain not bid through the roof that only a few people have an interest in than you are to find a good domain NO ONE has shown interest in.

          Probably the best regular deals sources now are dropcatching services with registrars that don't have auctions. better be registered at a few though and even then the catching is so competitive you might still lose out on most

          Mike you are making up shit that I did not say. Nowhere have I said I do not use metrics at all. And I especially don't say stuff like that to sell a course.

          I said that I would never buy a domain based on ITS metrics. That would be stupid. I'm not going to buy a domain just because it has a DA of 25 and TF of 20 without looking closer at it. You would throw away a lot of money if you did that. Same thing when PR was published. I would never have bought a domain just because the PR Toolbar said it was a PR 4.
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          • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
            Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

            Mike you are making up shit that I did not say. Nowhere have I said I do not use metrics at all. And I especially don't say stuff like that to sell a course.
            Congratulations on your legal name change - Should I call you "Some" or Mr "People"?

            I really don't give a flying fig about your language abuses. Bravo nine year olds can do that too. Doesn't make any difference to the truth to what I said. if you are hoping to stir something up to get some exposures think again. I didn't even mention your name and We both know this is not the only thread this has been discussed

            but spare me the I would never say or do anything for a sale. I dared to mention that PBNs might not be good for a number of serps anymore because of their expense and the new adwords layout and you and a certain goon came into the thread calling it a sales thread so you could shut it down - all to protect sales.

            I taught you a good deal what you know about PBNs Mike (in fairness we learned a bit from each other no matter how you deny it on your side) and when I retired my course you were the one saying "great...glad you shut it down too many people are buying now its not good for the market"

            lol and then 6 weeks later guess who was selling the course with some of the same training on PBns that was supposed to be bad for the market?. So you can throw around your "making up sh** Mike" (you ought to know all about making things up) all you want.Its the truth and I have read the claim in many threads so much so I wanted to know what crack the people claiming it were smoking. No one named you by name and if you can claim others are doing things for sales then you might as well live with it coming back your way when appropriate.

            Now go ahead sneak in a sales blurb or a guru like claim and we can let the thread be without you trying to censor sentences that didn't even mention your name.
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  • Profile picture of the author SilenceMedia
    For PBN i using DA as basic metric, you should double check this from your expired domain search platform, default data often be wrong. Second is backlink count from Ahref or majestic seo should be balance with their referring also domain should be indexed by google.
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      • Profile picture of the author Oggyoi
        Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

        Then why would you post in this thread?
        So we know where to buy best roller skates for women
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        • Profile picture of the author DABK
          I thought it was because they wanted you guys to know they make only 1 spelling mistake per sentence, these days.

          Originally Posted by MikeFriedman View Post

          Then why would you post in this thread?
          Originally Posted by Oggyoi View Post

          So we know where to buy best roller skates for women
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  • Profile picture of the author SEO Pearl
    You have need to see the following some important aspects,

    Less spammy rate for the blogs.
    Need good metrics such as good DA/PA
    TF/CF need to be decent
    Choosing the unique C class IP would be good for it.
    Need the OBL would be less ( You can choose if the OBL is below 10)
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  • Prefilter lists first of course based on DA or TF.

    Use a tool like RDDZ in combination with Majestics API to analyze the metrics of the backlinks pointing at that domain, one by one. It also has a function to check whether the links are live and dofollow/nofollow as well as amount of OBL's.

    So once you start that tool remove all the nofollow, remove all the links with TF<10 or something, remove all the links with many hundreds of OBL, at that point you'll see that there are not too many links left, even when a domain has hundreds or thousands of links.

    At that point you can take a manual look at the remaining links.

    Enter the domain manually in Ahrefs or Majestic as well before you plan to buy it, to check the anchor distribution, I wouldn't buy a domain where most of the anchors are exact or commercial in nature. This final look up also allows you quickly to see if there are any dubious anchors, like viagra/louis vutton or Chinese / Japanese or Russian spam anchors.

    In addition you can enter the domain at archive.org to see if the history of the actual website has been rather consistent, eg not been part of a PBN or other spam activities like auto-generated crap.
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    • Profile picture of the author TKzTechnology
      Originally Posted by Christiaan Hamming View Post

      Prefilter lists first of course based on DA or TF.

      Use a tool like RDDZ in combination with Majestics API to analyze the metrics of the backlinks pointing at that domain, one by one. It also has a function to check whether the links are live and dofollow/nofollow as well as amount of OBL's.

      So once you start that tool remove all the nofollow, remove all the links with TF<10 or something, remove all the links with many hundreds of OBL, at that point you'll see that there are not too many links left, even when a domain has hundreds or thousands of links.

      At that point you can take a manual look at the remaining links.

      Enter the domain manually in Ahrefs or Majestic as well before you plan to buy it, to check the anchor distribution, I wouldn't buy a domain where most of the anchors are exact or commercial in nature. This final look up also allows you quickly to see if there are any dubious anchors, like viagra/louis vutton or Chinese / Japanese or Russian spam anchors.

      In addition you can enter the domain at archive.org to see if the history of the actual website has been rather consistent, eg not been part of a PBN or other spam activities like auto-generated crap.
      The domain I bought yesterday have been indexed in Google now.

      I have one question though, I checked another domain a few minutes ago and could see that it did a 301 redirect around 2015-16. Would you buy a domain like that, or have it passed all the juice to the new domain?
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      • Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

        The domain I bought yesterday have been indexed in Google now.

        I have one question though, I checked another domain a few minutes ago and could see that it did a 301 redirect around 2015-16. Would you buy a domain like that, or have it passed all the juice to the new domain?
        Once you're in control of the domain the redirect will be gone so if the links are still there the domain will retain it's strength.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      Originally Posted by Christiaan Hamming View Post


      In addition you can enter the domain at archive.org to see if the history of the actual website has been rather consistent, eg not been part of a PBN or other spam activities like auto-generated crap.
      even for that I don't rely on archive - hit or miss the domain will be archived and quite a few good domains were used for PBNs, never got deindexed or penalized and are here and there a good buy. I find DNS history is pretty killer though. how often the dns changes and in many case to low cost host DNS settings is a pretty good give away how bounced around the domain has been (on long expired domains that you can't tell whether they dropped out of Google's index or were penalized deindexed)
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      • Originally Posted by Mike Anthony View Post

        even for that I don't rely on archive - hit or miss the domain will be archived and quite a few good domains were used for PBNs, never got deindexed or penalized and are here and there a good buy. I find DNS history is pretty killer though. how often the dns changes and in many case to low cost host DNS settings is a pretty good give away how bounced around the domain has been (on long expired domains that you can't tell whether they dropped out of Google's index or were penalized deindexed)
        I actually only look at that when its a non dropped domain. Those dropped ones always have much dns history.

        On the other hand, if you look at old domains that are still alive you'll see that they have a ton of dns history build up over the years as well. Take warriorforum.com for example, 52 changes on 42 unique IP addresses over the last 12 years.
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  • Profile picture of the author silveroaks
    DO NOT register any domain because of the metrics. or try using a risk-based pricing model. DIY metrivs really are a hype.
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  • Profile picture of the author TKzTechnology
    When would you guys start posting to your money sites? I have made 3 neutral posts so far, and working on a money site article for later use now.
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  • Profile picture of the author thong minh gian phoi
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      • Originally Posted by TKzTechnology View Post

        Don't you make any other posts before linking to your money site?
        That is a very common site that many use or have used in the past, small chance the poster owns it.
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