A domain can be registered for up to 10 years. If the domain expires and for some reason, the owner doesn’t renew it, it will be listed for sale or will be made available for registration by the registrar. 1000s of domains are registered and dropped every day. The expired domains can be precious or worthless. To understand the reason for this, you should know that each domain has certain characteristics i.e. age, authority, etc. An expired 8-year-old domain might be precious. An extension dropped after a year might be worth a cent.
To find expired domains, you’ll have to use some web applications. Today, I’ve covered the list of the best expired domain finder tools and tips that will help you to find a great expired domain. I’ve divided this post into two sections. In the 1st section, I’ve shared 3 important tips and in the 2nd section, I’ve shared the list of tools.
Tips
A domain can be harmful or not. If you buy a domain that was penalized by Google or banned from various affiliate programs, your hard-earned money will be wasted. Thus, make sure you:
Check if the domain is banned from AdSense
Although there are several affiliate programs, many people use AdSense to monetize their sites. If for some reason, the domain or the website is banned from the Google AdSense program, the website owner will simply dump the domain and buy another one. The best tool to learn whether the domain is blacklisted or not is the AdSense sandbox. Two of the most popular tools are CTRLQ and DigitalPoint.
Check the domain’s backlinks
If the site hasn’t been banned from the AdSense program, you should check its backlinks. Sometimes, a Google algorithm update may kill the traffic of a website. One of the major reasons why Google drops the ranks of pages is the website owner created tons of unnatural backlinks to the site. The best tools to check backlinks are SEMRush, UbberSuggest, SerpStat. If an expired domain you want to buy has toxic backlinks, you can use the Google Disavow Tool to make Google ignore the toxic links while ranking your site.
Choose a trustworthy registrar
Once you find a great expired domain, you should not waste time registering it. This is because 1000s of domainers are always in search of expired TLDs. Namecheap, NameSilo, and Uniregistry are the three of the cheapest domain registrars. These three registrars have a marketplace section where you’ll find newly registered as well as expired domains.
Check out the Namecheap marketplace.
View the Uniregistry marketplace
If the domain is listed in an auction, you’ll have to buy the domain from the registrar that is running the auction.
Best expired domains finder tools
Here’s the list of websites where you can find expired TLDs, ccTLDs, etc:
ExpiredDomains dot net
ExpiredDomains Dot net database comprises of 30+ million deleted/expired domains. It supports 400+ extensions. It is the best place to find expired domains. As the database is huge, you’ll have to spend some time finding the right domains. Once you find a DN, you should click on it to see the list of registrars where you can register the DN. EXDN displays the number of backlinks pointing to the DN. It displays the registration year (birth year from archive.org database), Alexa rank, and whether the domain is listed in the DMOZ directory or not.
FreshDrop
FreshDrop claims itself to be the largest domain marketplace since 2007. Unlike Expired Domains Dot Net, it doesn’t display the number of domains in its database. FreshDrop provides a range filter instead of a sort tool. You can adjust the range by adjusting the tiny round button displayed on the left/right side of the progress bar.
FreshDrop supports country-level TLDs, top extensions, etc. The data displayed by FD is filtered in real-time. FreshDrop is a great tool but the color theme used on the website is not good. The bright blue color background of the filters hurts the eyes. Also, the text size is small which makes it difficult to read the text.
GoDaddy Auctions
GoDaddy is not only one of the largest domain registrars but it is one of the best places to find and buy expired domains. GoDaddy enables you to filter domains by their initial alphabet, expiry date, price, etc. It also enables you to sort TLDs by their name, traffic, estimated values, bids, time left for the bidding/auction to close, etc. The registrar doesn’t make you aware of the domain’s spam score, domain authority, etc.
Like you, many people might be interested in purchasing the domain. The users place their bid and wait for someone to place theirs. This goes on until the price reaches a point that no one places their bid. GoDaddy auctions is a paid platform. You must have a GoDaddy Auction subscription to buy domains.
Domcop
Domcop has a massive listing of 2.9+ million domains that have expired or are about to expire. DC provides a powerful search tool and an option to filter domains by:
- Domain authority, open page rank.
- Citation flow, trust flow.
- Backlinks, Alexa rank, etc.
Domcop lets premium users export links. DC has a statistics section where you’ll find various important details on the domains in its database.
