Also called link profile
Backlink profile, explained
Investors check it with link indexes such as Ahrefs, Majestic and Semrush. The useful measures are referring domains rather than raw link counts, the share of links from real editorial sites, and whether anchor text matches the name's topic. Pair it with a Wayback Machine check to see what the site was when it earned those links.
For expired and aged domains, links are part of the value and part of the risk. Genuine links from news, education or industry sites suggest real past use; anchors full of casino, pharma or adult terms, sudden link spikes or networks of thin blogs suggest manipulation that can follow the name to a new project. Google's spam policies, updated in March 2024, name expired domain abuse: buying an expired name and repurposing it, primarily to manipulate search rankings, with content of little value to users. Buy aged names for what an end user can build on them, not as a ranking shortcut.
AI writing tools have made it cheap to fill a dropped domain with filler pages, which is exactly the pattern that policy targets.
Example. Before bidding on an expired .com, an investor finds that most referring domains are thin blogs with casino anchors and walks away despite a high authority score.
Go deeper Expired Domains and Drop Catching: How the Domain Lifecycle Works
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Education, not financial, legal or tax advice. Domain investing is speculative and most domain names never sell. Read the disclaimer.
