How Does Google Know When a Website Has Changed Ownership

Are you one of those webmasters who has bought or is thinking about buying a existing domain?

I am, and I’ve bought hundreds of them over the years. Most of the time, it was because I wanted the traffic or ranking they already had. Other times it was because it was just a damn good name.

The thing about buying an existing domain is that you’re hardly ever going to be able to buy it for the standard registration fee because even if it’s just an expired domain and the owner didn’t actively try to sell it, the registrar will almost always auction it off. You can easily spend anywhere from $20 to well over $10,000 but usually, you’re going to pay a few hundred dollars for a domain with a respectable amount of existing traffic and/or ranking.

More than a few times, I’ve watched my investment sour pretty quickly. Rankings dropped like a rock. Traffic disappeared. The domain became worthless to me.

After a couple of experiences like this, I was able to see a few common factors and realized how Google was able to tell that the ownership of the site had changed. Once they did, they reset it to zero. It was basically being treated like a brand new domain with no trust. Its age and back l

inks no longer carried any weight.

So let me save you some headaches (and money) by sharing what I’ve learned along the way so that you can buy existing domains without the painful experience of watching your investment go down the drain