Tropical storm Ernesto is drizzling down on us. There are a few heavy showers, but nothing to write home about. We thank God for that.
If you're mining old, expired domain names to use for their "reputation", you need a source. In my comments on my last post, I mentioned 1expired.com, and there are others out there that sell lists of expired domain names.
I used these for a bit, but because they place them in tables, (even though they show things like PR and backlinks), it was too hard to cut and paste them into the Domain Grave Digger.
So, somehow, (not even sure how I found this site), I came upon SeguinHost.com. Seguin is great because they offer the domain lists free, and separate them by dot com, net and org. The lists are published each day, and all you have to do is copy them right off the web page.
http://www.seguinhost.com/expired-domains-list.php
But the complete expired list is much too big for the Domain Grave Digger to handle. You'll need a file splitter to split the files into manageable chunks. For this I use the free tool called The File Splitter. After I copy and paste the entire dot com list into notepad, I'll feed that into File Splitter. I'll select "Custom" size for the output (it defaults to a floppy size), and make 20k the size of my files. That's about right.
Next, all you do is open the text files it creates, one by one, and feed them into the Domain Grave Digger. This script works well on most servers that allow PHP, but according to the creator, it has had problems on some servers. You can find the script here:
http://www.myinstantsupport.com/expired_domain.zip
I can't help you if the script does not work for you. The PHP is pretty straightforward. I did put my own Google API key in my version, but it appeared to work without modifications as well. One thing I did find is that the script won't work when archive.org is down for maintenance - and there is no error from the script. It simply says all the domain names are bad (failed).
Once I have good domain names, I check them out at iWebTool.com.
So, there you go - a great way to get nice domain names that people and companies have let expire for one reason or another.
7 comments:
Dave,
Does expired domains still work?
According to this thread: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/10036.htm
Basically the thread makes it clear that Google is totally on to the expired domain with PR trick and once a domain expires any status that it had in G's algorithm is reset.
What is your experience?
I am so glad you brought that up. From my experience, any domains with PR still get Google's attention and are subject to a visit from the bot.
Here's where you can check:
https://www.google.com/
webmasters/sitemaps/sitestatus
Enter your URL in there and you'll see the last time Google visited your site. It will also indicate if you have any pages indexed.
For a test, I created a site on one of the PR 5 sites which hadn't had any pages indexed. After three days, the home page was indexed.
But what is even stronger in my opinion, are backlinks. Make sure your domain name has them. This will help get pages indexed even faster than the PR. How many sites do you know that have a measly PR of 1 or Zero, yet rank number 2 or 3 on the SERP? Tons! Backlinks rule.
Hi Dave,
I updated the script listed on your post here..
This script is working great.
Expired domains still work fantastic for fast indexing and high rankings
i make a lot of websites.. and can prove without a doubt the expired domains are more profitable.
Pete
Dave,
Thank you for your praise :-) to SeguinHost.com
I am glad you are getting good use of the expired domains service :-)
Best Regards
Jorge
www.SeguinHost.com
Actually, the lists are great, but I would favor getting something else - say Expired Domain Sleuth, which counts backlinks - to fetch/filter the domain names. Seguin's software, Expired Domain Fetcher - (which is actually only branded by them), does not.
When I tried to get a refund the fellow I talked to said - tough luck! I didn't like that attitude and it kinda soured my enthusiasm for SeguinHost (sorry, Jorge).
However, even the Expired Domain Sleuth does not accurately give backlink info. So, there isn't an easy way of getting domains that I've found - except manually, as I've suggested.
A friend has pondered programming something to do everything that I suggest here, but is a few months from reality.
Since I posted this, I've found by experience that you will gain more momentum and strength using links rather than expired domains.
Hope you have found the same.
Thanks, Thanks, Thanks
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