How To: Perform Due Diligence on a Domain Name

Back in 2015 I founded a service called Verified Domains. Verified Domains was the first-ever service on the internet that provides comprehensive background checks for domain names. I personally been worked on the patent-pending process since the beginning. Before you buy a domain name and start using it for your website, I urge you to get your domain verified. Not only did Verified Domains uncover any potential problems with the domain name before you use it, the service guaranteed it, up to $50,000.

While I'm no longer associated with Verified Domains, I do provide custom domain name due diligence research and reports on request. Feel free to contact me at Hartzer Consulting for more information.

A while back I wrote a comprehensive post on the Verified Domains site titled “Why Verified Domains” that included some of the background and what it was all about. Essentially, it all started with a conversation at NamesCon with Brandon Abbey who, at the time, was President of Escrow.com. We both were in agreement that if such a service like Verified Domains was started, that it would be helpful. A while back when I bought a used car, I ordered several CarFax reports, getting the history of those cars. It simply gave me a bit more information about the vehicle’s history, and minimized some of the risk of buying a used car.

And let me tell you, I’ve been marketing websites, creating websites, writing and blogging, and I’ve seen my share of spam. I’ve seen plenty of awesome domain names churned and burned by spammers. I’ve seen companies buy domains and then find that those domains had search engine penalties. Even ZDNet blamed Google for their own lack of performing due diligence on a domain that they bought at a GoDaddy auction.

Internet domain names are considered to be virtual real estate. In the domain name aftermarket, domain names sell from $100 to several million dollars.

Domain names bought for as little as $10 can be considered high-value: The domain name will be a business' home on the web. A lot of investment in time and marketing will be spent. It will be used for email. It will be a business' public-facing website address.

The average domain buyer seldom knows that domain names may have had several owners. On occasion, domain names may have been used in the past for questionable purposes, such as distributing spam or housing objectionable or even illegal content.

Other problems troubled domains have that potential buyers don't necessarily see up front:

• Being banned by search engines causes search engine visibility issues
• Bad, spam or unnatural links pointing to it causes unwanted traffic to the site, maybe even causing bots to fill out online forms with spam
• Presence on email blacklists results in email not being delivered to recipients
• UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) disputes
• Trademark issues
• Fake traffic

Each of these issues causes headaches and problems if they're not cleaned up. It can cost a business thousands of dollars to hire a qualified search engine optimization (SEO) company to get bans revoked by the search engines.

Verified Domains used a manual review process to review up to 45 different data points that could affect a domain name. The patent-pending service also came with a buy-back guarantee, up to $50,000 per domain name.

If a domain name was given a clean bill of health by Verified Domains and a problem is found with the domain name within a certain period of time, Verified Domains will fix the problem or buy the domain name.

While I'm no longer associated with Verified Domains, I do provide custom domain name due diligence research and reports on request. Feel free to contact me at Hartzer Consulting for more information.

Looking to buy a domain name? Even an expired domain name? What if you were to move to a domain name that you just bought and found that it was full of problems and you literally couldn't use it to do business on the web. That's what happened to companies like ZDNet and Nuts.com. They bought expensive domain names, started to use them for their websites, and there were problems with them. Don't be that business--let's spot those issues before you buy the domain name, or, better yet, be aware of them when you buy it so you can address the issues.