Best way to spot burnt domains

**Mr-AJ** · 02-03-2012 04:36 PM

Let's assume you see a domain listed pretty cheaply and it's been offline for a while (you don't know how long exactly but content is out of index already and rankings are gone too). The backlinks look ok and not fishy. When the domain is thisisagreatsite.com and you google for thisisagreatsite you see it on 1st position. But this is not an indicator that the domain is fine imo. What's the best way to find out without rankings you can check and when backlinks look ok? When you google for "this is a great site" you can't find the domain but that doesn't mean it's penalized when there's some competition.

**Sebastian** · 02-03-2012 05:02 PM

I usually use the wayback machine, and look to see if the site had gibberish content on it at any point. You can also do a Google search for the brand to see if appears in bad neighborhoods. If there isn't content indexed, there isn't much you can do, especially in an auction setting. Just take the risk ...