Bought a 25-day-old domain, but it shows 1.1k historical backlinks - normal?
Hey everyone,
I recently purchased the domain curetotal.com through GoDaddy - it's only about 25 days old under my ownership. But when I checked backlink data:
- Ahrefs shows ~1.1k backlinks
- Ubersuggest shows ~27 backlinks
Both tools show referring domains and backlink history going back to previous years, way before I bought it.
My understanding is that this is because the domain was previously owned/used by someone else, and SEO tools track the domain's crawl history rather than registration date.
Questions for anyone who's dealt with this before:
1. Is old backlink history something to be cautious about (e.g., spammy/toxic links, previous unrelated use)?
2. Any way to check what the domain was used for previously?
3. Should I disavow old links, or leave them if they look clean?
4. Any checklist you follow before building on a previously-owned/expired domain?
Would appreciate insights from anyone who's bought aged domains before.
Thanks!
Replies
I've been curious about the backlinks too for my own domain, so I've been reading up on how backlink history works. The difference in backlinks count for you may be that one counts individual links and the other - referring domains (just a guess). On your questions:
You can look the domain up on the Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) to see what it used to host, and review the referring domains in a backlink tool for obvious spam. Google says most sites never need to disavow old links and it's mainly for clearly spammy ones, so checking the old referring domains first sounds like the sensible move.
I would recommend you to also check your domain in Google Search Console for clearer picture.