Google Weblog

March 10, 2003: New Google Spam Fighting

WebmasterWorld: Good news about expired domains. ``We've also put more of a focus on algorithmic improvements for spam issues. One resulting improvement with this index is better handling of expired domains--the authority for a domain will be reset when a domain expires, even though dangling links to the expired domain are still out on the web. We'll be rolling this change in over the next few months starting with this index. [...] I think you'll see more emphasis at Google on scalable algorithms rather than responding to individual spam reports.''

Basically, when you buy a domain that previously expired, you won't get the PageRank the old domain's owner accrued. Neat idea.

Posted by Aaron Swartz on March 10, 2003 09:42 AM