Hi,

Lets say one buys an expired domain. How does one then find out who owned it before and what it was used for.

Lets say the domain is somethinghost.com. One would want to make sure it wasn't used by someone who really tarnished the name -- and thus have a bad rep to overcome or folks thinking you were the bad apple that used to have the name.

At a minimum, I would think one would want to know about it.

Thanks a bunch for any info and links,

Louis

You can do a search here first.

Secondly, you can do a search on Google, and look at the cached copies of reviews, suggestions and complaints.

Worth a go.


Lats...

Hi Lats,

I've done that -- no hits. Wondering what else would be good to do.

Figure some pros here should know!

Thanks,

Louis

If you've been unsuccessful in searching here and Google, chances are that the previous owner didn't do much/anything with the name and should alleviate your earlier concerns.


Lats...

You could always perform a search at http://www.archive.org which may have archived the domain contents from a time gone by.

Hi Longhair,

I did that too. No matches.

Still wondering how I can find out who owned it before.

Also, how to know for sure they didn't do anything with it. could have a no follow in the html for search engines -- wouldn't know why someone would do that -- but they could if used the domain for something bad they didn't want indexed.

Just want to know what constitutes adequate due dilligence -- and what's knowable.

Thanks,

Louis

To determine who the previous owner was, you could try looking up the domain name at alexa.com. They seem pretty slow to update their listings. Sometimes you can get the name and address and phone number of the previous owner. You'll also get the number of sites that linked to the domain and the hits for searches that alexa comes up with. I have found that their hits and number of sites linking to the domain is not too accurate, most likely because the site was down for a few months between the time the time of previous expiration and the time you registered it.

For an idea of the previous content the site had, you can run a link:www.domainname.com, or linkdomain:www.somename.com in most search engines and get listings of sites linking to your domain name. That should tell you plenty about the previous content.

I do not believe there is any formal registry records kept regarding who ever owned a domain.

-t

These days there are probably more domain names that are not developed than that are. So if you make a decent effort at searching and don't find anything it's pretty certain that there's nothing to find. And if you can't find anything, your worry that they might have "tarnished the name" should be eased. If there was any bad rep, you'd find it.

Wish I had said that :)


Lats...