Domain history checker

How to read the result

What to do with the calendar

The result gives you the two ends of the record. The middle matters as much. Open the calendar on the Wayback Machine and look at a copy from every few years. You are checking three things: that the site stayed on one subject, that it was not parked or redirecting for long stretches, and that the language did not change. A site that was a local bakery for ten years and a casino guide since last spring is a repurposed domain.

When to use it

• Before buying an expired domain. Our page on expired domains and redirects explains what the history has to look like for the purchase to make sense.
• Before buying a link. A publisher with a repurposed domain is a common sign of a site built to sell links. The full list of checks is in how to vet a publisher.
• When metrics look too good. A high authority score on a domain that changed hands is covered in faked link metrics.

What it does not show

The tool does not list a domain's backlinks, its past owners or what Google thinks of it. For networks of repurposed domains, see private blog networks and link footprints. To check a page on the site itself, use the publisher page checker.

How to check the history and age of a domain

A domain has two histories, and they are kept in different places. The registry holds the registration record: when the current registration began, when it runs out and which registrar manages it. The Internet Archive holds copies of what the site looked like on the days its crawler visited. The checker reads both and adds a third fact: what the domain does today. The full check has three steps.

1. Run the domain through the tool. Note the registration date, the earliest archived copy, the latest archived copy and today’s status.
2. Compare the two start dates. If the archive holds a copy that is older than the current registration, the name lapsed and was registered again.
3. Open the calendar and read the middle. The tool gives you the two ends. What happened between them is the part that decides whether the domain is worth anything, and it has to be read by hand.

The tool reports “registered again” only when the registration began more than about four months after the earliest archived copy.

What domain age means, and what it does not

“Domain age” is used for two different things. One is the age of the current registration, which is the figure the tool shows as “Registered”. The other is the age of the site, meaning how long real content has been published at that address. They can be years apart in either direction.

On rankings, we make no claim either way. Google’s guide to its ranking systems, which was last updated on 10 December 2025 when we read it on 4 October 2026, does not name domain age among the systems it lists. That is an absence from one page. It is not a statement that age is never used.

What age can tell you without guessing:

What you see	What it does tell you	What it does not tell you
An old registration date	The current holder, or a chain of holders who never let it lapse, has kept the name for that long	That a real site existed for all of that time
An old earliest archive copy	Something was published at the address by that date	That the same site, topic or owner is there now
A registration date later than the earliest copy	The name was dropped and registered again	Whether the new use continues the old one

Use age to test a story. If a seller describes “a trusted site since 2010” and the registration began 14 months ago, the story is wrong. What people hope to buy with an old domain is its backlinks, and those need their own check: see how to check backlinks.

How expired and dropped domains get reused

An expired domain is one its owner let lapse. Once the name is free, anyone can register it, and the links other sites made to the old pages still point at it. That is why dropped names are bought. Our page on expired domains and redirects describes three uses: the domain is relaunched as a site on the same subject, redirected into a site the buyer already owns, or refilled with articles that exist to link out, as a node in a private blog network.

Google’s spam policies, last updated on 28 August 2026 when we read them, define expired domain abuse as cases “where an expired domain name is purchased and repurposed primarily to manipulate search rankings by hosting content that provides little to no value to users”. Google’s examples include affiliate content on a site previously used by a government agency, and casino-related content on a former elementary school site. Buying a lapsed name is not the violation. The switch of purpose is. See the Google link spam policy lesson.

How to read the Wayback Machine calendar

The button under the result opens the calendar for the domain. Read it in this order.

1. Go through the years first. Before you open any copy, see which years have saved copies at all. Look for years with nothing between years with plenty.
2. Pick a year and look at the dots on the days. The Internet Archive’s help page explains the colours: blue means the crawler got a normal page, green means it got a redirect, orange means a client error such as a missing page, and red means a server error.
3. Open one blue copy from the first year. Note the subject, the language and the name of the business or publication.
4. Move forward two or three years at a time and open another. You are checking that the three things you noted have stayed the same.
5. Slow down around any change. When the subject or language shifts, open copies month by month to find when it happened, then compare that date with the registration date from the tool.
6. Look at the green stretches. A long run of redirects means the domain was pointing somewhere else. Open one to see where.

A missing period is not proof that the site was down. The Archive’s help page says sites can be absent because its crawlers did not know about them, because they were password protected or blocked by robots.txt, or because the owner asked for exclusion.

Signs of a repurposed domain

• The subject changes. A local club, a school project or a trade body becomes a general blog about finance, health, technology and travel at once.
• The language changes. A site that was in one language for years reappears in another.
• A break, then a new site. Our expired domains page lists this first among the ways the tactic gets caught: the archive shows one site, then a gap, then a different one.
• Registration and topic change together. The tool’s “registered again” date falls just before the first copy of the new site.
• The domain now redirects. The tool shows the target. If the target has nothing to do with the old site, the domain is being used to move its links.

Several together are the pattern described in link footprints.

What to check before buying an expired domain

The tool answers the first question on this list and part of the sixth. The rest need a backlink tool and a search. The list is from our page on expired domains and redirects, which explains each step.

1. History. One site, one subject, one language, with no earlier drop.
2. Anchors. A profile full of casino, pharmacy or exact-match commercial anchors means the domain was already used for spam or was hacked.
3. Live links. Tools report links that were removed long ago.
4. Indexing. A domain Google has dropped entirely is a warning.
5. Trademark. A name that belongs to someone else can be taken from you.
6. Previous redirects. A domain that has already been pointed somewhere else has been used once.
7. Pages. The value sits on specific old addresses, and you need to be able to rebuild them. Redirects, canonicals and link equity explains why.

Do not buy on an authority score alone. Faked link metrics explains how redirected expired domains push those scores up.

What to check before buying a link on an old domain

Here the domain belongs to a publisher, and the question is whether the site you see is the site that earned its reputation.

• Does the registration predate the earliest copy? If the name was registered again, find out what the earlier site was.
• Has the site been on its present subject for its whole archived life? In our publisher vetting scorecard, a continuous history earns the full marks for domain history and a repurposed expired domain earns none.
• Does the seller’s account match the dates? A claim of ten years of publishing should show ten years of copies on the same subject.
• Who does it link to now? Run a current article through the publisher page checker.

Where registration records come from

The tool asks the registry for the domain’s ending directly, using RDAP, the Registration Data Access Protocol. ICANN describes RDAP as the replacement for the older WHOIS protocol, delivering the same kind of registration data in a standard format. ICANN’s page also says that all registries and registrars for generic endings must provide RDAP, and that since 28 January 2025 they are no longer required to offer WHOIS.

To find the right registry, the tool reads the list that IANA publishes of which RDAP server holds which ending. That is where the gaps come from. ICANN’s requirement covers generic endings such as .com, .org and the newer ones. Country endings set their own rules, and only some of them run an RDAP service. When an ending is not on the IANA list, or its server gives no answer, the tool shows “No public registration record was found for this ending”. The archive part of the check still works.

The record itself is short. The tool shows the date the current registration began, the date it runs to and the registrar. It does not show who holds the name, and a registration that never lapsed can still have changed hands by sale. So “one registration” means the name was never dropped. It does not prove one owner.

Where to go next

For a publisher, carry on with how to vet a publisher and how to buy backlinks safely. If the check turns up links you already have from repurposed domains, backlink audit and toxic links explains what to do, and the disavow file generator formats the file if you need one.