• majorAlexa

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. Link Building
        4. What tools/techniques you use to check if a domain has been penalized?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        What tools/techniques you use to check if a domain has been penalized?

        Link Building
        5
        12
        9506
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • wspwsp
          wspwsp last edited by

          If we think to buy expired or otherwise dropped domains, what tools or techniques you would recommend to check if there has bad SEO history?

          We could of course, check with Google itself if the site is indexed and ranks, but I am asking if there is a particular tool out there that would provide more information if a website had been shady.

          Thanks so much, guys!

          Lily

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • julianhearn
            julianhearn @wspwsp last edited by

            Thanks Lily.

            Redirecting old sites is unlikely to give you a rankings boost, especially if they have changed hands and have expired / dropped. You really need to buy them before they expire and don't change two many details.

            Think about seoa-moz.groupbuyseo.org to a-moz.groupbuyseo.org - all the link juice have been transfered, and so it should, its just a rebrand, same servers, so owners, etc. But if they brought so ramdon site and redirect do they deserve the link juice? No, and google doesn't think so either.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • wspwsp
              wspwsp @julianhearn last edited by

              That's  a great explanation, Julian! Thanks for adding up.

              Yes, the main idea is to redirect them at some point, that's why I want to be 100% sure they won't harm the rankings.

              Lily

              julianhearn 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • julianhearn
                julianhearn last edited by

                What are you trying to achieve by buying dropped domains? Are you planning to redirect them to your own sites for link juice? If you do that be very careful, there are lot better ways to get link juice.

                To check a domain I would:

                • search on google for the website name, e.g. "seomoz" does it rank? (doesnt too much if it doesnt the keyword might be competitive)
                • search for the url, e.g. seoa-moz.groupbuyseo.org if it doesnt rank number 1 for this i would walk away
                • does it have sitelinks under the domain name, if yes thats a good sign
                • grab some text from the site and search for it (ensure you are using a clear browser, e.g. no cookie history, so personalised search doesn't kick in), if its a couple of sentences it should rank for that
                • grab a few meta titles and search for them, if they dont rank for the complete title there could be a problem
                • does the site have page rank - a red flag if it doesnt
                • ask the site owner for the last years analytics traffic, the overall traffic graph would be fine
                • look at its moz rank, does it seem to match how it ranks, e.g. if very high moz rank but not ranking for the site name there could be a problem

                that should do it.

                wspwsp 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • Raydon
                  Raydon @wspwsp last edited by

                  this tool maybe?

                  more information can also be found in this post

                  But not sure how accurate would any data be that you may find from any of these tools if you do not have access to the site itself

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                  • wspwsp
                    wspwsp @David_ODonnell last edited by

                    I was looking more for how to spot shady link profile. A tool for that. Anyway, I guess there isn't such tool. Thanks, guys!

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • wspwsp
                      wspwsp @David_ODonnell last edited by

                      Yes, they are for email spam blacklist.

                      Raydon 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • David_ODonnell
                        David_ODonnell @RepLoc_Tim last edited by

                        These appear to be tools to check if the site has been black listed for email spam. While it's good to check for when buying a domain, it won't tell you if Google has penalised the site.

                        wspwsp 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • RepLoc_Tim
                          RepLoc_Tim last edited by

                          Here are a couple:

                          • http://www.blacklistalert.org/
                          • http://whatismyipaddress.com/blacklist-check

                          If you also want to check if email was blacklisted:

                          http://www.mxtoolbox.com/blacklists.aspx

                          David_ODonnell 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • David_ODonnell
                            David_ODonnell @wspwsp last edited by

                            Is there a site on the domain at the moment, or has there been one recently?

                            If there is you could see how well indexed it is (site: command), see if it ranks for it's own brand terms, and even moderately competitive terms.

                            You can also run the site through opensiteexplorer and see how dodgy the external link profile is.

                            wspwsp 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • wspwsp
                              wspwsp last edited by

                              That was a great idea for checking on traffic behavior compared to the algorithm updates! Thanks, David.

                              However I am asking if I do not have access to Analytics and GWT. If the domain is expiring and I consider buying it. Any ideas for that scenario?

                              Lily

                              David_ODonnell 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • David_ODonnell
                                David_ODonnell last edited by

                                One of the most obvious ways is to compare organic search traffic to the dates new algorithms go live. Checkout the Google Algorithm Change History page. There is even a chrome plugin called Chartelligence that overlays the algorithm change dates over your traffic data.

                                Also checkout webmaster tools for messages for unnatural link warnings from Googs themselves.

                                Hope that helps!

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
                                • 1 / 1
                                • First post
                                  Last post

                                Browse Questions

                                Explore more categories

                                • Moz Tools

                                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                                • SEO Tactics

                                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                                • Community

                                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                                • Digital Marketing

                                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                                • Research & Trends

                                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                                • Support

                                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                                • See all categories

                                Related Questions

                                • Rom1988z

                                  linking domain issues

                                  inbound links linking domains

                                  Hello guys. I am having issues with my linking domains. These domains are made outside of my website. I have tried to disavow these links but not able to do it. These are mostly from google redirects links. Here is the```
                                  code_text

                                  Link Building | | Rom1988z
                                  0
                                • shelbythomas

                                  Why are there less backlink domains in Moz vs. Semrush?

                                  For our domain studyville.com, Semrush is reporting 46 linking domains, and Moz is reporting 7. Does anyone know where there is such a large discrepancy?

                                  Link Building | | shelbythomas
                                  0
                                • Cfarcher

                                  Exact Domain Match does it help or distract?

                                  Does owning / buying an exact domain match help or not necessary? For example our main website ranks for nearly 14,800 Keywords but one KW we are trying to get in the top spot for we are currently at the bottom of page #1. We do see an exact domain match available so we purchased it but i don't know if it would actually help us or distract us. I was thinking we could create an article about the keyword on that exact domain then do some on page seo and back linking. But would that be more of a distraction VS. just focusing on getting more high quality back links to the main website we have ranked on Page 1 at the bottom? Any ideas or benefits to use an exact domain match to help boost also?

                                  Link Building | | Cfarcher
                                  0
                                • Mysites

                                  Moving blogs to different domain

                                  Hey guys, We currently have some blogs on one of our pages (fraserisland.com.au) and we are launching a complete rebranding of our sites. We want to move the blogs from fraserisland.com.au to the new parent page of travelfreedom.com.au (but still link it to fraserisland.com.au), however I don't know what affect this will have on the ranking of the blogs. The biggest thing I'm worried about is that the domain will be completely different, and not a sub domain, but I'm not sure what impact this will have on the effectiveness of SEO on the blog. Thanks guys

                                  Link Building | | Mysites
                                  0
                                • ganapro

                                  Why is my domain authority so low?

                                  Hello, a couple of years ago I started publishing on my site more than 10 posts a day of content that no one else had. For this reason, my competitors started paraphrasing my content without giving proper attribution, and they ranked better in Google. That's why I realized that apart from creating content I had to work on my SEO, so I started to get some backlinks, most of them via contests on blogs. I am getting about 1 high quality link from PR2, PR3 or PR4 blogs each week. According to Open Site Explorer, I have 20 root domain links (200 total links). In reality I have more backlinks but they don't show up (they do show up in Ahrefs, about 50 root domains). To my surprise, I only have 15 Domain Authority. This is the most evident example, take a look at this screenshot: http://imgur.com/dFk2rkx My website is on the far left, two of my competitors on the right. As you can see I win every category except total links and the most important, domain authority. Are total links that important for Domain authority, even if 99% are internal? By the way, I also have more posts than these guys, I don't know why the report says otherwise. Why is the site on the right ranking so high? The same thing happens with the rest of my competitors, they have a lot of low quality links from "lists of domain sites" and in general a lot of very spammy links. According to what I have been reading, my good quality links should be more helpful than my competitors'  spammy links, which should in fact affect them. So what is going on? I have no idea if I'm doing things right. Why is my domain authority so low? Thanks for your help. dFk2rkx

                                  Link Building | | ganapro
                                  0
                                • Clicksjim

                                  How to Manually Check if Link is Follow or No Follow?

                                  So I just got the link - yippee! When I look at the source code href line with my url I don't see the term 'no follow'. Does this mean I have a followed link?

                                  Link Building | | Clicksjim
                                  0
                                • eddie_olivas

                                  Should I Use a Backlink Plugin

                                  One of my clients recently asked me if he should use a Wordpress plugin to create backlinks to his website. He mentioned WP-Syndicator as an example. I just redesigned his website and I'd like to ensure that he gets a bit more traffic than he was before. Should I suggest that he purchase/use a Wordpress backlink plugin? If so does anyone know which is the best one? Not sure if it's necessary, but here is the website I'm referring to http://intouchhome.com

                                  Link Building | | eddie_olivas
                                  0
                                • casper434

                                  Are backlinks from sites like diigo useful for SEO?

                                  I read an SEO article that recommended getting backlinks from social bookmarking sites like diggo.com. Does anyone have any thoughts on the usefulness of these types of links?

                                  Link Building | | casper434
                                  0

                                Get started with Moz Pro!

                                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                Start my free trial
                                Products
                                • Moz Pro
                                • Moz Local
                                • Moz API
                                • Moz Data
                                • STAT
                                • Product Updates
                                Moz Solutions
                                • SMB Solutions
                                • Agency Solutions
                                • Enterprise Solutions
                                • Digital Marketers
                                Free SEO Tools
                                • Domain Authority Checker
                                • Link Explorer
                                • Keyword Explorer
                                • Competitive Research
                                • Brand Authority Checker
                                • Local Citation Checker
                                • MozBar Extension
                                • MozCast
                                Resources
                                • Blog
                                • SEO Learning Center
                                • Help Hub
                                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                • How-to Guides
                                • Moz Academy
                                • API Docs
                                About Moz
                                • About
                                • Team
                                • Careers
                                • Contact
                                Why Moz
                                • Case Studies
                                • Testimonials
                                Get Involved
                                • Become an Affiliate
                                • MozCon
                                • Webinars
                                • Practical Marketer Series
                                • MozPod
                                Connect with us

                                Contact the Help team

                                Join our newsletter
                                Moz logo
                                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                • Accessibility
                                • Terms of Use
                                • Privacy

                                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.