Member Avatar for cheetuh

i have a website with about 200 page impressions per day with pr1. im planning to buy an domain thats is going to expire in a few hours with about 25 impressions per day and pr5 and im dmoz. what is the best solution: To buy it and redirect that new domain to my website? or to build it again, using my website rss(for news)? i know that the new website is going to loose all the rankings but it has lots of backlinks ( including dmoz) what should i do?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by stymiee

Dani AI

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A few practical, up-to-date points to help choose between keeping the expiring domain or folding it into your current site.

First, two signals from 2006 are no longer useful: the DMOZ listing no longer exists (the Open Directory closed in 2017) and the old toolbar PageRank number is deprecated. Treat that PR5 number as historic trivia rather than a guarantee of value. Instead, evaluate the domain with current signals: quality and topical relevance of referring domains, anchor-text distribution, any sign of manual action or deindexing, and the domain's previous content (use the Wayback archive).

Quick pre-purchase checklist

  • Pull a backlink report from more than one tool (Ahrefs, Majestic, Moz) and count unique referring domains, quality of those domains, and how many links point to the same few pages.
  • Look at historical content via the Wayback Machine to see what pages those backlinks targeted.
  • Check search results with a site:domain.com query to see if the domain is indexed or has been penalized.
  • Scan for malware or spam history; check domain WHOIS history and any reputation flags.

Practical strategies

  • If links are high-quality and target topical pages, recreate or preserve those pages on the acquired domain and then either run the domain as a complementary site or carefully consolidate the strongest pages into your main site — map old URLs to equivalent new content so link value is more useful.
  • If the backlink profile is thin or spammy, consider not merging; use the domain for a focused microsite or park it until you can build relevant, high-quality content that attracts fresh, clean links.
  • For high-value inbound links, reach out to webmasters and ask for direct link updates to your preferred domain rather than relying solely on redirects.

Operational tips: verify ownership of both domains in Search Console, submit sitemaps, monitor traffic and index status closely for several weeks after any change, and prioritize page-level relevance when deciding what to keep or move. This approach preserves real ranking signals and avoids decisions based only on old PR numbers.

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Member Avatar for stymiee

You won't find a whole lot of value from that new domain. The PR will disappear once the domain expires. Google became a registrar so they can catch tricks like that.

The redirect will send the 25 impressions per day to your site but if the traffic isn't targeted I wouldn't expect much to come of it expect the slight possibility of more ads being clicked. If you redirect you might be able to get the editor of Dmoz to change the url to your old site which would be cool but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Member Avatar for guruwebllc

i would build up the new site and make the site better

Member Avatar for stymiee

DMOZ is experiencing major issues right now and may even be done for good. Add that to the fact that it is run poorly to begin with and I would say it is safe to assume that getting that link updated is a long shot.

As for the 301 redirect and PR, well, you won't get the PR. Google removes the PR for expired domains. They do that to prevent people from hording expired domains for the sake of increases their PR. The 301 redirect will allow you to keep the traffic but that's about it. (This s one of the main reasons they became a registrar).

I say figure out which domain is better for SEO and your users (hopefully that is one in the same) and use that as your main domain.

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