How are you finding expired domains?

[Strike]

I've used ODYS domains successfully in the past but their service has its flaws:

• You're paying 2x-20x more for the domain than they paid at auction (you can check this with namebio.com). Or 50-200x more if they caught the domain when it dropped. The latter case will push forward the createdate which is less than ideal.
• They put their own landing page on the domain, and let this get indexed. Basically advertising to Google that if the domain is used again, it won't be because the business itself sold. Google could choose to ignore this signal but I don't think that's going to be the case forever.
• Since they're only one player in the market, if you just use ODYS, you're missing out on looking at like 99% of valuable domains that get picked up by other parties when they drop.

If you have niches you want to enter there are obviously better ways of doing this. But I'm struggling to build a process that is not a huge time drain.

• expireddomains.net is good but their metrics are quite antiquated (no Moz DA/PA for example), keyword searching is tricky without having a lot of saved searches you need to check, and there are no email alerts. It can be used but is time-consuming.
• Domcop has better metrics but keyword searching I've found difficult to set up without once again having to create heaps of saved searches. You can bring in ahrefs DR which is great but no easy way to then look at the RDs themselves without doing an export. There are email alerts but I couldn't figure out how to set them up in a way that I would get value out of them. Not worth paying for.
• Spamzilla: similar to Domcop, only has very basic keyword searches. The spam checker is pretty useful though.
• DHG: people have raved about this but I've never found its searching method to actually work. Also you need to buy proxies and run it on your computer which is pretty 2008. I wouldn't mind this if it worked but I have never been able to find decent DR > 25 domains. I think it's mostly used for making PBNs, or it's for people who don't mind DR < 5 sites.

The one advantage ODYS has is they are not just relying on keyword searches. Since they would be looking at all domains with decent SEO metrics, they might find ones that would be relevant but you won't pick up if you're just looking at keywords.

For example if you wanted to start a site about microphones, you might search for words like "microphone" and "audio". But if Rode went out of business and rode.com dropped you probably wouldn't spot this. I'm not sure how to solve this problem.

My question: what is your workflow, in broad terms? Do you use expireddomains.net with a VA or have you managed to set up Domcop in a way that delivers value? Or do you just skip straight to the aftermarket sellers like ODYS?

 

[Potatoe]

You can set up a routine to check expiring auctions on platforms like GoDaddy, Sav, NameSilo, DropCatch, and Dynadot, instead of looking for expired names. Each platform has its quirks, like NameSilo's expiring auctions ending at 3 am EST daily.

*This gives you the more broad overview of SEO domains in auction, though, rather than filtering anything by niche.

Just with the eye test, look for expiring domain auctions where the price seems disproportionately high compared to the name's quality. With this method, you essentially let others sift through upcoming expiring auctions so you can focus on names with the highest bids that stand out like, "Hmm, why is this auction priced so high? The brand isn't that great..."

For instance, if you see "Rode.com" for $35k, it might not seem too surprising just based on the name itself, but "JohnnysMicrophoneWorld.com" at $5k almost certainly has SEO value.

You'll find a lot of better names compared to scanning lists of already expired domains. By the time the domain actually expires, you're looking at the leftovers of the leftovers of the leftovers. Someone let it expire, nobody wanted to bid on it in auction, nobody tried to catch the domain the second it expired, and THEN it'll show up in an expireddomains.net search, where nobody else wanted it before you found it.

Beyond that, you can also monitor domains that don't get any bids in auction etc and are set to drop, and put in an order using a service like Catch.club to catch them as they drop, putting you a step ahead in the human centipede of domaining (Unfortunately, even the person at the front of the line still eats shit by paying near-retail end-user prices in the current landscape of domain auctions... but at least you can avoid the Odys tax).

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When I wrote this out, I didn't realize DomCop also searches auctions, but I'll still post in case it sparks anything for anybody. I believe ExpiredDomains.net has a "Marketplace" tab that should serve a similar function, so this might be redundant. I like to just cruise through each platform as part of my routine a couple times per week, but I'm not really looking for SEO domains, although I do stumble across them.

Like you said, this is kind of tricky if you're looking for specific niches and keywords, but you might find some names that are so good you'll enter a niche you hadn't considered yet.

 

[Strike]

You can set up a routine to check expiring auctions on platforms like GoDaddy, Sav, NameSilo, DropCatch, and Dynadot, instead of looking for expired names. Each platform has its quirks, like NameSilo's expiring auctions ending at 3 am EST daily.

*This gives you the more broad overview of SEO domains in auction, though, rather than filtering anything by niche.

Just with the eye test, look for expiring domain auctions where the price seems disproportionately high compared to the name's quality. With this method, you essentially let others sift through upcoming expiring auctions so you can focus on names with the highest bids that stand out like, "Hmm, why is this auction priced so high? The brand isn't that great..."

For instance, if you see "Rode.com" for $35k, it might not seem too surprising just based on the name itself, but "JohnnysMicrophoneWorld.com" at $5k almost certainly has SEO value.

You'll find a lot of better names compared to scanning lists of already expired domains. By the time the domain actually expires, you're looking at the leftovers of the leftovers of the leftovers. Someone let it expire, nobody wanted to bid on it in auction, nobody tried to catch the domain the second it expired, and THEN it'll show up in an expireddomains.net search, where nobody else wanted it before you found it.

Beyond that, you can also monitor domains that don't get any bids in auction etc and are set to drop, and put in an order using a service like Catch.club to catch them as they drop, putting you a step ahead in the human centipede of domaining (Unfortunately, even the person at the front of the line still eats shit by paying near-retail end-user prices in the current landscape of domain auctions... but at least you can avoid the Odys tax).

---

When I wrote this out, I didn't realize DomCop also searches auctions, but I'll still post in case it sparks anything for anybody. I believe ExpiredDomains.net has a "Marketplace" tab that should serve a similar function, so this might be redundant. I like to just cruise through each platform as part of my routine a couple times per week, but I'm not really looking for SEO domains, although I do stumble across them.

Like you said, this is kind of tricky if you're looking for specific niches and keywords, but you might find some names that are so good you'll enter a niche you hadn't considered yet.

I should have been more careful with my wording, I meant expiring, not expired. Completely agree they are worthless once dropped and left for a while.

One thing I can never understand, what is the difference between all of these auction sites, and which ones are actually worth looking at?

My current understanding:

• GoDaddy expiring auctions: the big one, definitely worth looking at. GoDaddy closeout/member auctions, not so much
• Dropcatch auctions: auctioning domains that they have caught that multiple people have placed a backorder on. So not worth looking at if you have a workflow that would have already processed the domain before it dropped - if it was of interest, you would have placed a backorder and you'd be in this auction already.
• Namecheap: same as GoDaddy but like 0.1% of the volume? I thought they were a huge registrar but I don't see many people watching their auctions in the same way they do GoDaddy.
• Dynadot: looks similar to GoDaddy but lower volume - their "Expired Domain Auctions" are the same as GoDaddy expiring auctions?
• Sav: "Expired" auctions look relevant.
• Namesilo: "Expired" auction category has domains with expiry dates a year from now, as well as domains listed on Sedo. I assume these are actually customer auctions?

What about Namejet? Their "expiring" auctions are "...names from NameJet exclusive registrar partners." according to them, whatever that means. And if you look at the list, it's the same domains available in the Namesilo "Expired" auction category.

This whole world is such a clusterfuck but I'm sure there's a way to understand it and create a process.

 

[Potatoe]

One thing I can never understand, what is the difference between all of these auction sites, and which ones are actually worth looking at?

The main difference is inventory, since any given registrar will have the names that are expiring from their own customers, and sometimes from other registrars. Some registrars let GoDaddy manage their expiration flow instead of doing it in house (PDR for example), others manage it themselves or through other partner networks (NameSilo for example). Some will send theirs to SnapNames instead of GoDaddy, etc.

I'll go into as much details as I can, you probably know a lot of this already, but maybe someone will find it useful.

GoDaddy expiring auctions: the big one, definitely worth looking at. GoDaddy closeout/member auctions, not so much

Yep, they simply have so many DUMs (domains under management) along with their partners that send them expiring inventory, so they'll have the largest inventory and the most competition to buy it. More options, higher prices, less likely to find something amazing without paying up for it - but more likely to find something amazing period.

There are some gems in the closeouts, but maybe not so much for SEO. The closeouts are the names that made it through the expiring auction process without any bids, so I imagine anything with decent SEO potential would have been scooped up by then. I'd also imagine most people who want to sell a domain for its SEO value, like a domain that had a legit site built on it, probably wouldn't do that via the user auctions, but it could be the case that some domainers don't even realize they have a nice SEO domain so if you can find a quick way to look through these without any extra effort, it might be worthwhile, since you'll have less competition looking there.

Dropcatch auctions: auctioning domains that they have caught that multiple people have placed a backorder on. So not worth looking at if you have a workflow that would have already processed the domain before it dropped - if it was of interest, you would have placed a backorder and you'd be in this auction already.

Agreed. DropCatch owns something like 1-2k different registrars that'll try to catch each name, to increase their chances of getting it, so they manage to snag a good amount of drops but not all of them. If you did place your backorder elsewhere and DropCatch caught it instead, it's nice to be able to hop into the auction for a second chance at it.

It's pretty quick to spot the good names here, for example I just visited and in 2 seconds found NC/Urban/Survivor/Union in .org, it's got 500 referring domains and would work great for the rehab niche. Vice, NPR, Slate, Georgetown.edu, DrugPolicy.org, countless other orgs and 4L .com local news sites linking to it. (I haven't dug any deeper, so if anyone sees this and thinks of bidding, def do your own DD still).

If you don't want to muck around with all the different dropcatchers individually, like if you really want to make sure you get a name or that you're at least a part of the auction (esp. for places where you can't join in the auction later), catch club is nice and they'll also place your order at dropcatch.com as long as your proxy bid is $59+ (along with dozens of other dropcatchers). So, using them instead of drop catch will increase your odds, but they charge 20% for their troubles (You might be able to email them and ask for 0% if you plan to use them often, or that might have just been a launch promo...)

Namecheap: same as GoDaddy but like 0.1% of the volume? I thought they were a huge registrar but I don't see many people watching their auctions in the same way they do GoDaddy.

Namecheap has something like 15 million DUMs, I think GoDaddy is around 80-100 million, so they're definitely smaller but not by orders of magnitude. I'd guess that, per capita, GoDaddy has a lot more accounts with one, two, or three domains in them whereas NameCheap probably has more domainers there with more domains per user.

As such, GoDaddy users might be more likely to build sites, forget about them, etc, meaning that they'd have a disproportionate amount of SEO domains expiring compared to NameCheap and others.

I'd bet that GoDaddy has way more developed sites per DUM than NameCheap, Dynadot, NameSilo, Sav, and it's probably not even close.

Dynadot: looks similar to GoDaddy but lower volume - their "Expired Domain Auctions" are the same as GoDaddy expiring auctions?

Yep, way smaller, I think under 5m domains under management, and a lot more of their users will be domainer folks who are price conscious for their large portfolios, rather than someone who saw a SuperBowl ad and wanted to make a site, so they'll have fewer SEO domains to choose from in total numbers, and also disproportionally fewer, too.

Sav: "Expired" auctions look relevant.

They're the smallest on this list, I've seen some decent SEO domains pass through, though. They're kind of janky, I wouldn't keep important names there long term.

I recall they had some beef where Dan.com wouldn't let you sell Sav-registered names on Dan's platform because they were saying Sav was biting their landing pages or something. I think they had like one poor dude running all of their support at one point. Haven't seen as many complaints recently, I wouldn't hesitate to grab a solid name there if I found one, but I'd move it away.

Namesilo: "Expired" auction category has domains with expiry dates a year from now, as well as domains listed on Sedo. I assume these are actually customer auctions?

Filter by expiring, then sort by end date, and you'll get the current day's batch.

I've managed to snag a few real nice SEO domains from NameSilo for surprisingly cheap. One of them was $100ish and Odys recommended a list price of around 4k, for instance. If anyone is looking for a non-dropped SEO domain in the food niche, entertainment/music, or education, hmu cos I'm not doing anything with them after all

If that $100 name was on GoDaddy, I imagine it would have went for a loooot more.

What about Namejet? Their "expiring" auctions are "...names from NameJet exclusive registrar partners." according to them, whatever that means. And if you look at the list, it's the same domains available in the Namesilo "Expired" auction category.

It gets pretty incestuous, yeah. Namejet, Snapnames, etc. Between GoDaddy and Catch.Club with a $60 proxy, you can cover most of your bases in terms of expiring and drops, but you'll miss out on some great options that expire elsewhere with very little competition, too.

Unfortunately, this all still makes more sense if you're looking for SEO domains in general, like if you were a reseller or just open to a lot of different niches, as opposed to finding great options for your specific niche, so I'm sorry that I couldn't help too much with that. I'm not really looking for SEO domains so I haven't done much to automate my process, just some basic filters and rolling up my sleeves.

I'm partial to NameSilo's expirations, though. In addition to the aforementioned handful of SEO domains that I'd like to get rid of, I also picked up a name there for $2 + renewal that sold a year later for 3k. Another one for $10 with 2 renewals that went for around 1k, and a handful of others in the $500-$900 range that were around $10-$20 each.

Sav is really good for janky extensions and .io, but these typically haven't been developed yet. Park.io is another option to check out, btw, if you can find a quick way to check them for SEO value.

 

[RBT]

Just wanted to share my experience.

I found an old, obscure, abandoned site manually. I basically keep a list of relevant sites that seem abandoned along with their expiry dates.

Since it was my first time buying expired domains, I wasn't sure if I would actually be able to catch it so I used a service. I added it to DropCatch and Namejet.

DropCatch couldn't get it but Namejet did. A bidding war ensued with 50-60 people. I went up to 1.5K since I didn't have time to get my account verified in time and that was the limit for unverified accounts. Someone bought it for 3K+ and this guy has like tens of thousands of domains.

Now, I wonder if I made a mistake by adding the site to those services because they make that list public. It was a pretty obscure site which was with Google Domains so I am not sure so many people would have known about it otherwise. Other domain registrars may sell their expiring domains lists but I don't think Google does.

 

[Strike]

The main difference is inventory, since any given registrar will have the names that are expiring from their own customers, and sometimes from other registrars. Some registrars let GoDaddy manage their expiration flow instead of doing it in house (PDR for example), others manage it themselves or through other partner networks (NameSilo for example). Some will send theirs to SnapNames instead of GoDaddy, etc.

I'll go into as much details as I can, you probably know a lot of this already, but maybe someone will find it useful.



Yep, they simply have so many DUMs (domains under management) along with their partners that send them expiring inventory, so they'll have the largest inventory and the most competition to buy it. More options, higher prices, less likely to find something amazing without paying up for it - but more likely to find something amazing period.

There are some gems in the closeouts, but maybe not so much for SEO. The closeouts are the names that made it through the expiring auction process without any bids, so I imagine anything with decent SEO potential would have been scooped up by then. I'd also imagine most people who want to sell a domain for its SEO value, like a domain that had a legit site built on it, probably wouldn't do that via the user auctions, but it could be the case that some domainers don't even realize they have a nice SEO domain so if you can find a quick way to look through these without any extra effort, it might be worthwhile, since you'll have less competition looking there.



Agreed. DropCatch owns something like 1-2k different registrars that'll try to catch each name, to increase their chances of getting it, so they manage to snag a good amount of drops but not all of them. If you did place your backorder elsewhere and DropCatch caught it instead, it's nice to be able to hop into the auction for a second chance at it.

It's pretty quick to spot the good names here, for example I just visited and in 2 seconds found NC/Urban/Survivor/Union in .org, it's got 500 referring domains and would work great for the rehab niche. Vice, NPR, Slate, Georgetown.edu, DrugPolicy.org, countless other orgs and 4L .com local news sites linking to it. (I haven't dug any deeper, so if anyone sees this and thinks of bidding, def do your own DD still).

If you don't want to muck around with all the different dropcatchers individually, like if you really want to make sure you get a name or that you're at least a part of the auction (esp. for places where you can't join in the auction later), catch club is nice and they'll also place your order at dropcatch.com as long as your proxy bid is $59+ (along with dozens of other dropcatchers). So, using them instead of drop catch will increase your odds, but they charge 20% for their troubles (You might be able to email them and ask for 0% if you plan to use them often, or that might have just been a launch promo...)



Namecheap has something like 15 million DUMs, I think GoDaddy is around 80-100 million, so they're definitely smaller but not by orders of magnitude. I'd guess that, per capita, GoDaddy has a lot more accounts with one, two, or three domains in them whereas NameCheap probably has more domainers there with more domains per user.

As such, GoDaddy users might be more likely to build sites, forget about them, etc, meaning that they'd have a disproportionate amount of SEO domains expiring compared to NameCheap and others.

I'd bet that GoDaddy has way more developed sites per DUM than NameCheap, Dynadot, NameSilo, Sav, and it's probably not even close.


Yep, way smaller, I think under 5m domains under management, and a lot more of their users will be domainer folks who are price conscious for their large portfolios, rather than someone who saw a SuperBowl ad and wanted to make a site, so they'll have fewer SEO domains to choose from in total numbers, and also disproportionally fewer, too.



They're the smallest on this list, I've seen some decent SEO domains pass through, though. They're kind of janky, I wouldn't keep important names there long term.

I recall they had some beef where Dan.com wouldn't let you sell Sav-registered names on Dan's platform because they were saying Sav was biting their landing pages or something. I think they had like one poor dude running all of their support at one point. Haven't seen as many complaints recently, I wouldn't hesitate to grab a solid name there if I found one, but I'd move it away.



Filter by expiring, then sort by end date, and you'll get the current day's batch.

I've managed to snag a few real nice SEO domains from NameSilo for surprisingly cheap. One of them was $100ish and Odys recommended a list price of around 4k, for instance. If anyone is looking for a non-dropped SEO domain in the food niche, entertainment/music, or education, hmu cos I'm not doing anything with them after all

If that $100 name was on GoDaddy, I imagine it would have went for a loooot more.



It gets pretty incestuous, yeah. Namejet, Snapnames, etc. Between GoDaddy and Catch.Club with a $60 proxy, you can cover most of your bases in terms of expiring and drops, but you'll miss out on some great options that expire elsewhere with very little competition, too.

Unfortunately, this all still makes more sense if you're looking for SEO domains in general, like if you were a reseller or just open to a lot of different niches, as opposed to finding great options for your specific niche, so I'm sorry that I couldn't help too much with that. I'm not really looking for SEO domains so I haven't done much to automate my process, just some basic filters and rolling up my sleeves.

I'm partial to NameSilo's expirations, though. In addition to the aforementioned handful of SEO domains that I'd like to get rid of, I also picked up a name there for $2 + renewal that sold a year later for 3k. Another one for $10 with 2 renewals that went for around 1k, and a handful of others in the $500-$900 range that were around $10-$20 each.

Sav is really good for janky extensions and .io, but these typically haven't been developed yet. Park.io is another option to check out, btw, if you can find a quick way to check them for SEO value.

Thanks, this is really helpful.

If you don't mind me asking, when you mention applying some basic filters and rolling up your sleeves, how are you deciding what domains to take off the platform and analyse for their SEO metrics? Are you sort of doing it by hand, finding domains with bids that don't have inherent domain value as you alluded to earlier (ie, not microphone.com) and then analysing them one-by-one? As you mentioned you picked up some domains for like $2 I assumed you might be doing a more bulk approach where you analyse 10k at a time, if you're able to find good domains that aren't bid up to $500 already.

I have typically done the latter but running that many domains for their metrics gets tricky unless there is some way to access Moz's stuff without getting set up with their API or a reseller's API. But using the first approach limits you to just domains that other people have already found.

 

[Potatoe]

@Strike I'm usually not looking at domains for SEO at all, just the name itself. I'll filter out hyphens, numbers, etc - but if you're looking for an SEO play those might not bother you. I have some searches that'll filter for any names in .com with one of twenty or so different words in it (City, labs, media, home, etc). Main criteria is "would some unlucky founder be willing to eat ramen for a year to have this be his project's name?"

When I've found SEO domains with beautiful link profiles, it's just been by chance because I'll see a name on the list and I'll be surprised that it's gotten any bids, even if it was only $100-$300, it's like "Why on earth would anyone bid on this... oh, I see why..."

 

[gunnar]

I just found this Godaddy auction (geocities.com). The older guys will remember it.

Nice backlinks, btw. ;-)

 

[tziahs]

@Strike I'm usually not looking at domains for SEO at all, just the name itself. I'll filter out hyphens, numbers, etc - but if you're looking for an SEO play those might not bother you. I have some searches that'll filter for any names in .com with one of twenty or so different words in it (City, labs, media, home, etc). Main criteria is "would some unlucky founder be willing to eat ramen for a year to have this be his project's name?"

When I've found SEO domains with beautiful link profiles, it's just been by chance because I'll see a name on the list and I'll be surprised that it's gotten any bids, even if it was only $100-$300, it's like "Why on earth would anyone bid on this... oh, I see why..."

That's exactly what I focus on too. If it's an attractive, brandable domain name, and it doesn't have a shady history, it's a catch.

The problem is determining IF the previous domain had a bad history (used for spam, or a shady business that just happens to have a similar name).

For the latter one, I have several funny stories of "semantic misunderstandings", like buying a domain focused on massages, when in fact it was a shady porn website, focused on erotic massages. Just do your due dilligence and look for the domain everywhere you can, especially on social media.

Oh, and I got my last domain from @Nargil . Good guy.