Sherlock Holmes Domain Tools

Hey Everyone,

Today's blog post is about: Researching Your Domain Names Like Sherlock Holmes with These Tools

For most of us we probably do our keyword research and come up with a domain name based on those keywords if it's available or a variation thereof. The rest probably don't really care about a keyword rich domain name and come up with their name based on personal preference or a whim or whatever strikes their fancy. I myself am always torn when I want to buy a domain name because a cheeky domain name suits my personality but my brain tells me keyword-rich is where the money is. But either way, whichever camp you fall into, I hope that you do your due diligence before buying your domain names.

Why am I telling you guys this? Well when I first bought my domain name clothdiaperaccessories.com I didn't research it. I didn't even know how. I just did my keyword research and "cloth diaper accessories" looked good according to the numbers and the domain name was available. I was pretty stoked that it was available and that no-one had ever thought of it before me lol....ha ha what a maroon...of course someone thought of it before me...

Have a look at this screenshot:

That's my domain name up there but that's not my website. And if you can see it clearly enough, the two screenshots for this domain are from September 2012 and March 2013. I only started my website in August of 2015.

The reason I started researching my domain name is because Google Webmaster Tools has thrown out the oddball thing or two about my website. For instance 404 error codes for pages about "Flushable Diaper Liners" or "Cloth Diaper Sprayers" that I haven't even written yet. I've submitted my sitemap to Google but the Big G seems to not want to let go of those pages.

But then I got to thinking what if my domain name was registered before? And after a little bit of research it turns out that indeed my domain name was registered before. Then I got to thinking about what other people would have to go through with their domain names if they didn't know these kinds of things either. So I've put together a list of the tools I use to check domain names before you buy them with a couple of really useful tools that are free and easy to use.

Here's how you can research your domain names before you buy using and example domain name. In this example I chose "ihomesuccess.com" that kind of domain name sounds like cutting-edge home business to me.

So let's find out if this domain name has been registered before by going to:

http://whois.domaintools.com/

So you can see from the screenshot that "ihomesuccess.com" is available to register as a domain name. But it has been registered as a domain name before.

The next tool I use is:

http://screenshots.com

So from the screenshot you can see that this website used to be one of those "get paid to take surveys" type of websites. It's bordeline spammy at this point but we don't know for sure if it really is.

So then the next tool you can use is:

https://archive.org/

It's the home of the waybackmachine and it can often have a lot more details about a domain name than screenshots.com but the screenshots at archive.org aren't so great. So here's a sample of the history of "ihomesuccess.com"

If you look at the calendar it shows the date of May 17th, 2014 highlighted in blue. That means that a snapshot of this website was taken at that time and put into the archive. If you click on that blue dot you get this page come up:

Curioser and curioser...it doesn't show the archived snapshot for that page..instead it shows a link. So I copy that link and paste it into my web browser and this page comes up:

Aha!...so that link goes to a website called "Toluna" and it is one of those "earn points for prizes and rewards" type sites.

So think for a moment what that means. Did the wayback machine make a mistake with that website's snapshots? Nope...

It means that "ihomesuccess.com" dropped their domain name and redirected themselves to "toluna.com"

Now why would a website that claims to have rewarded tons of money to it's members redirect to another domain name?

Probably Google de-indexed them for being spammy under the old domain name and they are starting fresh with a new one. What does that mean for the old domain name?

Good luck getting any Google love with that domain as it has probably been marked as spam. Is there a way to come back from a Google penalty? I imagine there is but it's probably a lot more time consuming than going back to the drawing board and choosing another domain name that hasn't already been tossed off the internet by the Big G.

Try out these tools on your existing domain names and see what turns up for you. Especially if you are having a hard time getting indexed or ranked in Google or if something doesn't seem right in your Google Search Console data.

So play detective while you play affiliate marketers and until next time,

Keep on your toes Lovelies!

Thischick aka Lori