Avoid domains with a checkered past

Buying a domain name is pretty much like buying a home. Although homes look similar, each one has a unique story to tell. And that’s where buying a domain  name can get risky.

What if the domain name you’re eyeing had a reputation as a spam website or contained inappropriate or even illegal content? What if it had earned a penalty from a search engine and was banned?

On occasion, a client would come to us with a domain name that they had bought, at significant expense, only for us to find that it had questionable activity in its past. By that time, considerable investment had been made not only for the cost of the domain name, but also branding and promotions. In weighing the pros and cons, oftentimes the only solution was to walk away from the domain name, buy another one, and go through a costly rebranding exercise.

Verified Domains offers domain name background checks. We check up to 45 different data points to make sure a domain name is clean as a whistle and ready for commerce on the web.

That’s why Globe Runner created Verified Domains, the first-ever domain name background check service. It sprung from our  ‘measure twice, cut once’ philosophy with our clients for whom we do due diligence when they search for domain names to buy. We check up to 45 different data points to make sure the domain names they are going to purchase are worth their investment. Now, you too can avail of this patent-pending process.

3 Reasons to Go Verified

1. Get 100% control over what surfaces on search engines when your domain is looked up

Without due diligence, you’ll never know what the domain was used for previously, who owned it, and whether it will cause your business harm in the future.

2. Avoid the enormous expense of re-branding

Some of the issues we have seen with purchased domains include:

• Domain name banned in search engines. Banned domain names will cause search engine visibility issues. If someone is looking for your company, your website won’t be found in the search engine results. It will cost you thousands of dollars to hire a qualified SEO company to get the ban revoked by the search engines.

• Domain name has bad, unnatural, or low quality backlinks. Dodgy backlinks will cause unwanted traffic to your website, maybe even cause spammers with bots to fill your online forms with spam.

• Domain name is on email blacklists. Email won’t be delivered to its recipient when you send it if your domain name is on a list of blocked websites.

• Domain name has one or more UDRP disputes filed against it. If UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute-Resolution) claims have been filed, you’re looking at potential legal issues (yes, people go to court over domain names).

• Domain name has previously hosted malware. Malware hosted websites will have issues in search engine rankings and a bad reputation.

• Domain name has fake traffic. The seller may be inflating the traffic just to make the domain name look like it’s more valuable than it actually is.

Each of these issues will cause headaches and problems if they aren’t cleaned up.  And there is no guarantee that a domain name you’ve purchased can be cleaned up. Sometimes the only alternative is to bite the bullet and walk away.

3. Protect your investment in your brand

Your domain name is a tangible component of your brand equity. You are going to make that domain name your home on the web. You will invest time and money into marketing it. It will be used for email. It will be your public-facing internet website address.

If your brand was to be acquired by an investor, wouldn’t you want all brand assets to be as solid and faultless as possible? That way you can command a higher price.

You have nothing to lose with our buy-back guarantee

Globe Runner is so confident in its patent-pending process for Verified Domains that every assessment comes with a buy-back guarantee of up to $50,000. Visit the Verified Domains website to read more about our methodology and check out the different levels of due diligence that we offer.