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I am going to buy a domain name to build a WordPress related business. When I search my desire domain name I found that it is available.

But when checking the domain name in the Wayback Machine, I found that there was a WordPress marketplace site between 2009 and 2011. Then there was a WordPress related blog on 2013 to 2014.

I don't know whether they used black hat methods to drive traffic or any bad thing.

If something happened like that in past, will it affect me in 2018 also if I buy this domain name and start a website (SEO, email spam perspective)?

Or can I totally forget my fear since there was no website in the last 4 years?

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Once you get the domain you will be able to check through Google Search Console the links you have. You can also double check your profile link with other non-free tools as: Link Detox, Ahrefs or Majestic.

Make sure you disavow the low-quality and toxic links using the official tool and you will be fine.

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  • Google Search Console only shows a small sample amount of links and disavow should only ever be run as a last resort (1,000's of low-quality links), if not done correctly you end up worse off. – Simon Hayter♦ Jul 9 at 20:37
  • That depends on the number of links, but even a sample is worth for analysis. I agree that we need to be careful with disavowing but if the domain has already toxic links, it's the best way to go on with the SEO strategy. We can suggest other platforms like Link Detox but they are not free. – Emirodgar Jul 10 at 10:47
  • Emirodgar the sample is based on percentage... therefore Google Search Console will never show the entire link profile of any domain. Also, it is impossible to certain to know if links are hurting because penalties are based on link diversity, most bad links are simply ignored, only sites that know they have a penalty should use disavow tool. Google expects a lot of bad links since its naturally that low-quality sites and others link to them, also Google does try and factor in your competitors doing negative link building on your site too. – Simon Hayter♦ Jul 10 at 11:23
  • Nice debate. When you start a project (therefore you have few links) 100% of the generated links are showed at GSC. Here support.google.com/webmasters/answer/55281?hl=en you can read: "Not all links to your site may be listed". No "percentage" is mention (although we know it starts with a high number of links). Google recommends "..that you remove as many spammy or low-quality links from the web as possible.." and after that, use disavow tool to reach all of them: support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2648487?hl=en. There is no need to wait for a penalty or penalization. – Emirodgar Jul 10 at 11:48
  • It's a not a debate... Google does not reveal all site links, fact. The more links you have the more links you can see, therefore it is logical to assume that this is based on percentage. Furthermore, you're reading what you want to hear. If you take note that it does say: If used incorrectly, this feature can potentially harm your site’s performance and a considerable number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality links, now the important wording here is considerable number, a considerable number is thousands, in the opinion of SEO experts. – Simon Hayter♦ Jul 10 at 13:33
up vote 0 down vote

I don’t know whether they used black hat methods to drive traffic or any bad thing.

My suggestion there are bunch of ways to check this before buying the domain:

  1. Check the domain through Aherfs to see the backlinks it has and from the types then you can usually decide whether the site is ok or it’s spamed.
  2. If you’re unable to see classify backlinks then you can use tools such Congitive SEO and it will automatically detect spammy backlinks & good backlinks.
  3. Another good way to see whether any blackhat method is used is by the backlink’s anchor texts, frequency & trustability of source.
  4. You can also try with alternatives to webarchive to see if they have picked something which you don’t like. eg: ScreenShots & Archive.is
  5. Finally you can also try to see any old indexed pages on search engines and also try to see what search query “yourdomain.com” comes up.

If something happened like that in the past, will it affect me in 2018 also if I buy this domain name and start a website (SEO, email spam perspective)?

If it’s has a bad history site-wise and backlink-wise then you need to decide whether you have the time & resources it takes to build the new trust, disallowing the bad links, recover from the bad reputation, earn the search engines trust again.

Or can I totally forget my fear since there was no website in the last 4 years?

You should never ignore but you need make a calculated decision since backlinks are can be alive even if domain was expired so you need to weigh in your options to make an informed decision.

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