Would you start a niche website on a Spam 4/17 domain?

[Victor Avram]

Hello, trying to speed up a little bit the process, I've purchased an expired domain, aged, with some authority ( 12 ) but has a spam score of 4 out of 17 according to Moz. Majestic's trust flow is 10 and CF 8 on the www version, lower for just the domain name. I don't really get it what's the difference between them two ( the www version of the website and without ).

Technically, getting some new links should lower that score ( hopefully ), would you start a new website with a domain like this or you'd rather go for a fresh one?

Thanks,
Vic

 

[Adam H]

Depends on the backlinks but to be honest a DA of 12 isnt really worth taking the chance of spam links, it would only take a couple of authoritative links to punch a new domain above 12 DA with the full knowledge that you havent got a load of crappy links which may be picked up again once the domain starts to resolve again. Another option is to only redirect referrers which you want links from and letting the rest goto a black hole.

 

[Murray]

With 12 it can't have that many links, could just disavow them if they concern you

I suppose it depends how good the domain is to whether you want to spend time cleaning up the bad links and any penalities it may have

 

[martin-s]

The difference between the www and root url is that the statistics are normalised separately.

So all www domains are normalised against each other
And all root (whole site) domains are normalised against each other
Likewise individual urls

And note that I say normalised, not averaged.

Edit - I'd agree with Adam and Murray. A Trust Flow stat of 10 (I rate TF much more accurately than DA by the way) isn't anything to get too excited about - either in terms of spam to solve or links to leverage.

 

[scottmccloud]

DA, TF and AHRefs' DR are only indicators and I would only use them as a very general guide. They have absolutely no direct link with how Google ranks your website and I've come across countless domains that have really strong backlink profiles that are scored lowly in one or more of these indicators and some absolute spamfests that are given really high scores for some reason.

You're best basing your decision on what the actual links are. Are they spammy or not? Another factor to think about is how Penguin is in realtime now. If you can build some strong links you should hopefully see rankings rise. You can also disavow the current links if you think they are spammy like Murray said.

If it's a nice domain that's perfect for the niche your using I'd probably stick with it. Can't say for certain though without knowing it.

 

[Victor Avram]

Thanks to all of you for the replies!

I agree the DA is low enough not to get too fussy about, but it's quite a small niche , so low link building potential and I thought I could use that as an advantage. I haven't decided yet, I guess it might worth a test..