[Case Study] Spamdexing: Expired Domains vs New Domains

As a keen automation enthusiast, I decided to run a case study to answer 2 questions:

Does SPAM still generate traffic?
Is it better to start with a new domain or an expired one?

I will conduct this case study over 6 months with blog posts every 2 months (4 articles total including this one).

What is Spamdexing?

Spamdexing is the art of publishing a large quantity of content on a site in an automated fashion, often of low quality, with the goal of generating traffic on a certain percentage of the pages.

My Model

This is a proven model, perfected since 2016 across 70-80 domains, both new and expired. This model has generated over $220,000 in revenue, including close to $100,000 in 2021 and $75,000 in 2022. For obvious reasons, I will not share the niche or content type in detail.

I've collected a lot of data through Search Console analysis -- with over 35,000,000 impressions and more than 4,000,000 clicks, this helps me refine content generation by taking the top 1-gram and 2-gram terms to generate titles for new articles.

The Test Protocol

To answer the questions posed, we need a protocol that puts both types of domain names in competition.

Choosing Expired Domains

My choice for expired domains is simple since I rely on my own expired domain search automation, which generally provides 1 to 2 good expired domains per day. These are not thematically aligned -- they have a minimum of 7 indexed pages.

Choosing New Domains

For new domains, I go with .com and .net, using as many keywords as possible from the mined data.

The Automation

The automation is carried out through a WordPress plugin I developed. It is based on 6 variables:

Data source (3 sources)
Data filter 1
Data filter 2
Time between post creation(s)
Number of post(s)
Number of tags

Many steps are required to create a post, including title creation, content creation, image creation (via PHP-GD), and more.

Setting Up the Test

I decided to create the sites over 30 days, 1 site per day -- alternating between 1 expired and 1 new domain. Each "pair" (2 days) will have exactly the same variable settings. In total, 30 new sites to create and monitor over 6 months.

What I Will Track

Number of indexed pages (likely a 4-page filter) through a custom tool
Search Console coverage
Number of impressions
Number of clicks

Update 08/02/2022

As promised! 2 months after the launch, here is an update on the freshly collected statistics.

Number of Indexed Pages

New domains: 3811 / Expired domains: 3735

Score per pair -- New: 11 / Expired: 4

Extremely close total page counts, but new domains have a notable lead per pair. One third of the expired domain indexed pages come from the first domain in the test.

Traffic

New domains: 3170 (CTR 16.8%) / Expired domains: 397 (CTR 5.4%)

Score per pair -- New: 15 / Expired: 0

Decisive score. New domains generate 8x more traffic. No expired domain site outperforms any new domain site. CTR is 3x higher on new domains.

Update 10/04/2022

Back as promised after 2 months. Things are not improving for expired domains.

Indexed Pages (Oct)

New: 10756 (+182%) / Expired: 10947 (+193%)

Score per pair -- New: 7 / Expired: 8. Expired domains win the indexation battle.

Traffic (Oct)

New: 7314 (+130%) / Expired: 1452 (+265%)

Score per pair -- New: 15 / Expired: 0. New domains generate 5x more traffic.

Update 12/22/2022 — Thanks Google

Back for a final update after a little over 2 months.

Indexed Pages (Dec)

New: 12199 (+20%) / Expired: 14053 (+28%)

Score per pair -- New: 6 / Expired: 9. Expired domains have an easier time getting pages indexed.

Traffic (Dec)

New: 5498 (-25%) / Expired: 891 (-39%)

Decisive score 14-1 for new domains. My conclusion: Changing themes? Expired domains will be useless without a perfect semantic transition.

The SPAM Update Works Well

We must acknowledge the drastic drop in traffic across all domains. The October 19th update clearly impacted this case study.

Revenue?

Based on the model I had planned, there is no revenue (yet). But a nice surprise arrived on October 8th: one of the purchased expired domains received an offer of $500, which I of course accepted.

Conclusion + What Comes Next?

In conclusion:

Expired domains perform worse for SPAM -- IF AND ONLY IF the theme is different.
You can still generate traffic with pure SPAM today.
Google handles updates well -- better and better -- but let's stay inventive.
Money potentially comes from other directions -- let's take what we can.

What's next? I will continue monitoring the sites as long as I can, renew the domains that generate traffic, and let the dead ones expire.