Domain Penalty Checking

[Ridge]

I bought a 5 year old domain yesterday, where can I check and see if there is a penalty or something?

[GregW]

I don't know of any definite penalty checking tools or anything like that, but I would check these two:

Wayback Machine - See what sort of content was on the domain before you got it. If there are lots of pharmacy/porn links going out of the site then it might not be looking too good.

Yahoo Site Explorer - See what links are coming in to the domain. If there are lots of spammy links coming in then I would be cautious.

[Ridge]

I checked both of those earlier I didn't see anything bad. The domain was registered in early 2004, had a general poker portal on it for the next 4 years, then was parked for the next several months.

Thanks TPB

[GregW]

I'd be very confident that it is fine then. If you wanted to be doubly sure you could always just build a small site to start with and see how it ranks. Going for the far less competitive terms of course.

[Ridge]

Well, it already has a 5 page site on it, but I'm not sure for how long.. Anyway, I'm sure it will be cool. I just didn't know if there was some tool I could check or if it just took actual leg work to find out

[pokermonger]

Do a site search (site:www.yourdomain.com) in google and see if all 5 pages are indexed and if the home page is listed first. Then see if the site ranks for the domain name. For example if the site is bingoandpoker.com see if it ranks for "bingo and poker" and/or "bingoandpoker"

This just gives you an idea, except if some of the pages are indexed and your home page isn't first on the site search, that is an indication of trouble.