How to know if a domain has been dropped

With more and more businesses building an online presence, a useful original domain name may be difference to find. However, dropped domains may be the perfect opportunity for you to begin building your business’ online identity.

What is a dropped domain?

A domain is, simply put, the more memorable name of a website or URL rather than a string of letters, numbers, and symbols. Examples: facebook.com, e-bay.com, google.com

A dropped domain means that it has expired. The owner hasn’t renewed the license with their domain registrar. The registrar can sell the domain at auction. The process and timeline can vary from registrar to registrar.

Know before you pay

Check the page authority (PA) and domain authority (DA) for domains before you buy. There are tools available on the internet that let you judge the quality of the domain. Make use of them before you take a call.

Know if it’s banned from Google

• It may have a high rating, but if it cannot be found by search engines, it’s not useful.
• Check domain names in Google cache, an online tool that allows you to see what version of the page is currently in its index.
• If you find a good domain that is banned, you can take the risk to purchase the domain and then appeal to Google with a ban consideration request.

Know if it’s banned from Google Adsense

Look at tools to check if a site is banned. Bannedcheck.com, Isbanned.com and iWebtool.com are some of the sites that let you know if a domain has been banned.

Check the website’s archive

To know what kind of website was associated with that particular domain, go to archive.org, type in the domain URL. A calendar will let you choose a date, even as far back as two decades, to see what the website looked like then.

Transfer of information

Check the WHOIS database for domain information. Has it been banned from search engines? What type of content has it been associated with? Check the internet archives to see if it was relevant to your business.

So, these are just some of the tools with which you get to know if a domain was really dropped or not. In the next article, we shall look at how to buy dropped domains.