This post is actually taken from one of my sales threads as a reply but thought it would be of interest to others.
I often get asked about what the different stats are for the expired domains and what they mean, what is good / bad and what they should be looking for.
Realistically what is good or bad for a domain does depend on what the domain is to be used for so I thought I would start off by highlighting what I feel is the main uses for expired domains and the types of stats that are of most interest when looking for domains for these uses.
When it comes to choosing which domains to purchase out of a large list it is important to take into consideration what the domain is to be used for:
Selling at auction:
Look for a clean brandable domain name, preferably .com but .org and .net can be valuable if domain quality is exceptional. PR should be good (PR3+ will be desirable), Moz DA should be above 20 DA and the Majestic CF/TF should be 1.8 or lower. As many referring domains as possible as stated by Majestic
Selling to pre-determined customer:
Same as above but with more emphasis on their requirements for the brandability of the domain and TLD.
Use as money site:
Same as above also
Redirecting to money site / customer:
Domain should be indexed in Google at least, Yahoo is a bonus and should mean it is also indexed in Bing. Referring domains should be high as well (preferably 50+). DA should be above 20 DA, Majestic CF/TF lower than 1.8. Having links from authority / high traffic sites such as trusted media outlets or important directory sites are very useful here. Having a low Alexa rank can be useful here if you are redirecting for traffic, if redirecting for rank the Alexa stats are not as important.
Building money site:
Same as redirecting to money site but with more emphasis on whether the domain is brandable or not. Domain should be brandable or at least have a keyword in its name.
Cloaking content:
Indexed status is very important here. High links / referring domains and a good DA are most important here
If I missed out any major uses for expired domains do let me know and I will append this list to highlight the type of stats I would be looking at for those uses.
Another big thing I get asked a lot is what the different quality metric stats are in reference to domains. Below I have highlighted a list of the main domain metrics as seen in my software Domain Hunter Gatherer but they are relevant to domains in general so if you are buying or selling expired domains it is likely that you are looking at some or all of the stats below:Domain: The actual domain name
PR: 0-10: Google's PageRank, not been updated since 2013 so not overly relevant but some domain and link sellers still use it as their main metric of importance
Age: How long since the first piece of content was archived in the internet archive (Wayback Machine). Generally an older domain will have more history and quality stats but it is meaningless on its own.
Chars: How long the domain is without it's TLD (e.g. cats.co.uk is a 4 letter .co.uk domain)
Hyphen: Whether the domain has a hyphen / dash "-" in it. Some people prefer them without though I don't find them to be overly detrimental
Numbers: Whether a domain has numbers in it. Whether or not they are undesirable depends on the use for the domain. Generally buyers at auction will prefer
TLD: The Top Level Domain without the domain name (e.g. cats.co.uk TLD is .co.uk, cats.com TLD is .com). When buying and selling domains generally .com is far more desirable than any others but sometimes you will be selling domains from a different region and then you may find that region specific TLD to be more desirable. Know your market.
DMOZ: Having a domain listed in DMOZ is always a good selling point, especially when building a money site on it, redirecting to money site or looking to sell the domain.
Google Indexed: Whether the domain is indexed in Google - definitely a bonus for almost all uses
Google Links: How many links are reported in a Google search. This number is always massively low-balled and not at all representative of how many links a site has or the type / quality of them. Mostly useless tbh
Google Mentions: How many times the domain is mentioned on a website. Some say that mentions of the domain or webpage are counted as a live link so higher could be better than lower but it is relatively meaningless on its own
Yahoo Indexed: Being indexed in Yahoo will also often mean it is indexed in Bing. There is no downside to not being indexed in Bing and Yahoo so is always a bonus though it is not generally quite as important as being indexed in Google.
Moz Links: Number of links as found by Moz's crawlers. Generally fairly representative of how many and the type of links that a site / domain has. Higher is usually better but it could represent spam if the other stats are not in line with this if the number of links is very high
Moz Domain Authority (DA): 0-100: A quality metric as decided by Moz, higher usually signifies more links and can (but not always) represent the quality of links also. If this and Moz Links is very high (30+) but other stats are not similarly high it could suggest a spam domain.
Moz Page Authority(PA): 0-100: Like DA but for specific pages, when talking about a domain it isn't really representative as it only represents a single page and not the domain as a whole as DA does.
Moz Trust: 0-10: Representative of links from authority sites and links from links from authority sites. Kind of convoluted and again relatively easy to game
Moz Rank: 0-10: Similar to PR but calculated by counting how many unicorns are born in the latest leap year of the Gregorian calendar and dividing by
Majestic Links: Number of links as seen by Majestic, generally quite representative of the number and type of links a site has.
Majestic Referring Domains: How many individual domains link to the domain regardless of how many links are on each domain. Generally more important than the number of absolute links.
Majestic Citation Flow (CF): 0-100: Representative of how many links a domain has irrespective of quality
Majestic Trust Flow (TF): 0-100: Representative of quality of links a site has.
Majestci CF/TF: This is not a Majestic stat but it is generally used to decide on the overall quality of a domain. If you divide the CF by TF and you get a value of 1.8 or below then there is a decent chance the domain is of decent quality and low likelihood of being the recipient of spam links. This is a very highly regarded stat in today's domain trading scene.
Alexa Links: Number of links as reported by Alexa, not really representative of the actual number or type of links.
Alexa Rank: Fairly easy to game and without huge importance today. It can be useful when looking for domains with existing traffic for redirecting but not as important when selling domains as it was 7 years ago.
The below Social stats are great when considered as part of an overall domain quality, especially when other aspects are taken into consideration. On their own these stats are relatively meaningless and some are quite easy / cheap to game so only use these as part of the story for the quality of a domain in conjunction with the other stats above.
Tweets: Number of tweets with the domain listed in it
Pinterest Pins: Number of Pinterest Pins for the domain
LinkedIn Shares: Number of LinkedIn shares of a domain
Facebook Likes: Number of times a page on the domain has been Liked by Facebook users
Facebook Comments: Number of comments mentioning a page on the domain by facebook users
Facebook Shares: Number of times a page on the domain has been shared by facebook users
Google +1s: Number of times Google Plus users have +1'd a page on the domain
SemRush stats, other than links, are generally only used for the more notable domains on the net so take them with a pinch of salt.
SemRush Links: Number of Links as reported by SemRush. Isn't always representative of the number or type of links a site has as a whole.
SemRush Traffic: Like Alexa rank this is an indication of the amount of traffic a site receives, it can be fairly vague in nature but is better to be higher than low or not existing
SemRush Keywords: Number of keywords that the domain is receiving traffic from. Higher is generally better but it doesn't really describe how many high traffic keywords it is ranking for, just the amount of keywords it is ranking for / receiving traffic from.
SemRush Rank: Only takes into consideration the traffic gained from the first 20 google results. Similar to Alexa Rank but less likely to be gained. Any ranking here is good (the lower the better).
SemRush Price: Very approximate value of a website. This is to be taken with a pinch of salt. Higher is generally better.
Ahrefs Links: Number of links total to the domain, this is representative of the number and quality of links a site has.
Ahrefs Ref. Pages: Number of unique pages that have a link to a domain irrespective of how many times a link occurs on each page
Ahrefs Ref. Domains: Number of unique domains linking to a domain
Ahrefs Domain Rank:Ranking in the top 10 million list of domains. Similar to Alexa Rank except not as likely to be gamed.
Without talking too bad of SemRush and Ahrefs their usefulness really comes from their website interface as opposed to their APIs as used by Domain Hunter Gatherer. These 2 services absolutely can be used to effectively gauge whether a domain is worth any amount of money but generally their respective websites are better used for this purpose. SemRush and Ahrefs have great UIs on their website and provide a large amount of information about the sites and their keywords / links / pages etc.
Despite being the seller of a expired domain hunting software the above information should be largely independent of any software or technique so even if you are looking for domains manually some of the above will hopefully be useful or interesting for you.
If I have missed anything off or I am an absolutely idiot because I got something wrong or mis-spelled something then do let me know and I will fix it and forever be indebted to you.
Cheers.