If the domain name was used for scams in the past, how can you recover the trust of your domain?

Everett Level X⁴

June 30, 2016, 1:23 pm

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If the domain name was used for scams in the past, how can you recover the trust of your domain?

Say you bought a website that was actually scamming people a couple years back. However, upon registering for the domain name you never bothered to check the previous history of the domain. Once you registered the domain, you begin to perform SEO and noticed the website existed before.

Not only did the website exist before, the website was actually created to scam people. Since the website is now a legitimate business, and it doesn't scam, is there any possible way to recover the trust of the domain? Can you try and contact scam directory website owners, and inform them that the domain was repurchased and legitimate?

Has anyone ever ran into this problem before?

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Lynne

No I've never run into this problem before. I think if I did I would dump that domain and start fresh. I wouldn't want to be associated with that scam or anything dodgy!

10 years ago

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idealmike

Well, in my early days of domaining, I've done this once before yes. But it was a gaming domain and there wasn't anything dodgy with it when it was originally up I just didn't realize it had previously been a website before until I found out about Waybackmachine and ran the domain through it and found out it was a flash gaming site before. It never ranked as high as most of the other sites I had back then and I think that was down to all these missing pages and things in Google. Moral of the story, I always check for past domain history for a domain I'm looking at buying these days using Waybackmachine and Google cache and search as well depending on the domain.

Now for your domain, at the end of the day, if you're going to do good with that domain now, and the good that can come about it far outweighs and negative aspect that it was involved with in the past then that should cancel it out so to speak. It's likely that most people that knew about that site when it was a dodgy site have forgotten about it. And any new people that visit that site aren't going to know about its past anyway. And even if they did, they can see that the site is now owned by new people are is operating legitimately.

So yes, absolutely there is a way to recover the trust of the domain. By operating that site in a legitimate way for a long time until anything that site was remembered for in the past is long forgotten about. As for your question "Can you try and contact scam directory website owners, and inform them that the domain was repurchased and legitimate?" So this domain you've purchased used to be a scam directory? But why would you want to contact the old owners of the domain and tell them that the site is now operating legitimately for anyway? Just leave it. Whatever happened in the past is in the past and you're doing much bigger and better things with it now.

If the domain name was used for scams in the past, how can you recover the trust of your domain?

10 years ago

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Everett

I always check for past domain history for a domain I'm looking at buying these days using Waybackmachine and Google cache and search as well depending on the domain.

I forget all about Waybackmachine. This would definitely be a tool to use in the future when purchasing any additional domains.

But why would you want to contact the old owners of the domain and tell them that the site is now operating legitimately for anyway? Just leave it.

Generally, by contacting scam directory website owners, not the previous scammish owners.

Also, what about negative SEO in regards to the domain, especially keywords associated that are like "WEBSITE SITE NAME scam"? How does one go about fixing that issue?

10 years ago

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MasterA

No, thankfully, this has never happened to me before. If you haven’t invested much money into your SEO, then I would recommend you change the domain as even if you contact scam directories to remove those reports, you may still have articles or negative reviews lying around on the internet and this will harm your business. If you have invested a lot of money already, then your best bet is to start to build a good reputation and make sure that you make it clear that the scams were not done by you. However, if possible, changing the domain is my recommendation.

10 years ago

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overcast

If domain once gets known for the scam, spam and other illegal things. You have to move to other domains. And make sure that you are not getting it. The reason being making the domain score positive will take years. And till then you are going to have the domain in the negative.And that's something you have to be seriously thinking about in terms of the conversion. And make sure to take the decisions in that case. Don't invest into such domains.

8 years ago

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Corzhens

That is the issue when buying a used domain. You have to do a thorough research about the use of the domain before. If there is an indication that it was used for evil ways like scamming or spamming then treat it as a hot potato, so to speak. Why re-use a domain with a bad reputation? Unless the domain name means life and death to you then you can choose for another domain.

8 years ago

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SEOClerks

If the domain name was used for scams in the past, how can you recover the trust of your domain?

If the domain name was used for scams in the past, how can you recover the trust of your domain?

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Lynne

idealmike

Everett

MasterA

overcast

Corzhens

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