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Google resets expired domains
Posted on December 10, 2007 - Filed Under Tips |
Why does Google reset links for expired domains? What is a reboot of link equity?
Matt Cutts sums it up with good humor:
By the way, I’d argue that some expired domains are closer to a bank at one location that goes out of business and becomes a coffee shop. That coffee shop can build up its reputation on its own, but shouldn’t automatically get the customers that were showing up hoping to do their banking.
And yes, I do know a Starbucks that used to be a bank. It still has the vault!
The same applies to buying used domains in an attempt to use their link equity. If you change the theme or combine sites you run the risk of Google sniffing you out. This almost always results in a reboot of link equity.
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December 11th, 2007 at 4:52 am
Hi Aaron,
If you buy an old domain (plus its website) the owner in the whois information and DNS will also change. Google Inc. is a registrar. Why?
If you become an accredited registrar you gain an extra level of access to the DNS system.
I think that even making legitimate changes to existing websites (i.e. a major update of the site, including some structural changes, new content and “optimization”) may result in a poor ranking. Changing a CMS can have very undesired effects.
I know a techno club in Berlin that used to be a bank. It is called “Tresor”. The vault is a dance floor :)
December 11th, 2007 at 7:20 am
Alpha - Yes, Google does sometimes get it wrong, much less now than before, I changed the site where I sell my product from a static html site to a wordpress blog not long ago and was amazed at how well Google did this time. If it was 3 years ago I would have been toast!
Another thing I did was change the permalink structure of my blog without using a 301 redirect, guess what? After a few days Google picked up the changes simply by crawling my newer sitemap.
Remember something called site flavor? Google gets a feel for a site, if your site takes a sharp turn you can run into trouble but if legit it will balance out. If you are doing what spammers do you just wasted your money like Mr. Wall did with his $50,000 blunder. ;)
It is harder to trick Google while at the same time it is getting easier for new sites to prosper.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Aaron, thanks for featuring this. I’ll repeat what I said in my blog post…this is worse and more threatening than paid links and it seems to be flying under the radar of most folks.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
Should DoubleClick.com’s link equity and rankings be destroyed? Google just bought them so they shouldn’t be entitled to it, right?
I disagree with Google and Todd. If it is not acceptable to Google that pagerank can be bought in this manner they should destroy DoubleClicks rankings for “internet advertising solutions” and similar terms.
December 18th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Actually I somewhat agree with the way they treat expired domains. If a webmaster doesn’t care enough to renew then the links are worthless to them. Also, why should a new domain owner get the link benefits from someone elses dead site?
Mindy
December 18th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
That is exactly right Mindy! :)
December 23rd, 2007 at 8:20 am
Hi Aaron,
With $50.000 you can buy very cool 3D graphics for a website and much more that the visitors will like. For example guppies.com has an animated fish (a chatbot), that is funny.
I start all my projects with a new domain, but I write my sites for fun :)
January 6th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
@Alphane Moon
Being a Registrar only entitles you to view the records of domains held at the Registry that belong to your clients. You do not have access to any other records belonging to other Registrars.
They do get more flexible terms on querying the services provided by the Registry through, which is probably why Google made this step.
March 17th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
Aaron, another thought would be the traffic an expired domain brings. So, yeah, Google resets the ‘link equity’ to nullify all existing backlinks (and from my experience puts a very slight penalty on the domain too for a good few weeks on top of the sandbox penalty). But, does Google punish you further for the traffic you receive from the existing backlinks? Are you really better off with a brand new, unused domain? At first you’ll think ‘yes’, but then - 15 years ago there were only a couple of hundred domains at most had been registered. In 15 years time…where will we be then? I tell you where we’ll be, we’ll be registering mybrandnewdomainnamethatissolongbecauseeverythingelseistakenu8659532.com.
The WWW’s going to be a sad, sad place before long, where every large corporate company now are going to own a monopoly and nobody will be able to get into the market: eBay, Google, and hell, can I even say AOL? Seems Rupert’s got his wallet out and is trying to defend what very little pride AOL have left. In my opinion, that time is long since gone.
It’s time someone takes a stand, and increases the domain dropping period to a healthy 6 months - thus, any traffic/link power will be dead and buried.
Keep up the good work, I must say it’s good to come back here and see everything’s still the same since last time I popped in last year - especially that ‘Copyright © 2007′ notice ;)
March 20th, 2008 at 5:12 am
Google is wrong. Matt Cutts is wrong. At least his analogy is. Look, if you buy the corner store, bank, whatever, and you move you put your coffee shop in there, should you get all the bank’s customers? No. Should you at least get the people walking down the street to see your shop? Yes. When I get stopped on the street and somebody asks me where your coffee shop is chances are I’ll tell them it’s over where the “old bank” used to be. And, the city doesn’t come in and tear up all the streets and sidewalks that led me to the bank…just so I don’t accidentally walk into a coffee shop. Does Google want to improve quality or control actions? By resetting the links, you’re saying to every person out there that gave the site a link that they don’t want to do that anymore. How can Google make that decision. If you link to a site, it is your responsibility to keep track and manage those links.
Matt Cutts talks about CUSTOMERS. That’s the problem with techies like Cutts, they equate traffic with customers. Nobody is going to walk into the coffee shop and make a deposit. I’m not saying expired domain names should carry the full weight of what they had, especially if these domains have irrelevant keywords. However, this is a slippery slope. A domain expiration isn’t much different than a sale of a domain. Google likes playing God and loves to try to determine intent where they shouldn’t. Domain age in and of itself is really the problem. Simply letting a site get a better rank because it has an older domain name is silly as is simply buying an old domain for the same purpose.
Not to mention…it would also behoove someone buying a domain (expired or otherwise) to go check the backlinks and clean things up. I wouldn’t scoff at getting a bunch of links to my site, but if they aren’t related…probably not going to do me any good…may even hurt.