The 7-check vetting before I buy an expired domain

The 7-check vetting before I buy an expired domain

I bought my first expired domain for $90 because it had 'good metrics.' Built 20 posts on it. Month 3: it got hit by a manual penalty the previous owner earned. Dead on arrival. $90 plus six weeks gone.

Now nothing gets bought until it clears all seven:

— Wayback Machine: was it ALWAYS in my niche, or did it flip from a Chinese gambling site to a 'pet blog'? Topic drift = pass
— Check every captured year, not just the last; the penalty hides in the gaps
— Anchor text profile via a free backlink tool: if 'casino online' shows up, walk away
— Referring domains should be real sites, not a network of 200 identical footer links
— Brandability: can I build a real entity on this name, or is it 'best-cheap-deals-now.net'?
— Google the exact domain in quotes for any leftover spam footprint
— Drop it into Search Console for a week BEFORE building, watch for ghosts

My next one passed all seven, $140, came with 12 clean niche links. Month 2 it ranked faster than any fresh domain I'd built — the aged trust was real.

The takeaway: Expired domains are loaded guns. The history is the asset OR the landmine — vet all of it, not the metrics dashboard.