How to Choose an Expired Domain in the Directory

Choose an expired domain on the evidence the listing publishes, in this order: who links to it, how many distinct sites do, whether the archived history is about your subject, and only then the score. As of 16 September 2026 the Revised directory holds roughly 11,000 expired domains that are available to register, 84% of which pass a low spam screen, and every listing is spam-screened before it goes up. Searching, filtering and sorting are free and need no account. Around a third of listings publish their name outright; the rest are masked until you reveal one. This guide covers reading a row, narrowing the grid, and the judgement call that decides it.

What does a listing publish?

Open the directory to see the grid. Metrics are public on every row whether or not you are signed in. Names are masked until a reveal (why), so the row is built around the evidence instead of the name:

• Domain: the mask, at the name's true length, with its first letter, final word and hyphens visible
• Citability: the Agent Citability score, where we hold one
• Revised Score: the per-listing 0 to 100 grade, relative to the whole directory
• Ref. domains and Backlinks: banded counts rather than a single precise figure
• Linked by: the notable sources that link to the domain, by name
• Snapshots and Age: the archived snapshot record and earliest verified year
• Spam: the result of the spam and trademark screen
• Value: a model comparison figure, not an asking price and not something we charge
• Checked: when availability was last verified

Columns can be shown, hidden, reordered and resized on any plan, and the layout persists in your browser.

How do you read Revised Score?

Revised Score is a percentile blend of centrality in our web crawl, referring domains and site history, calculated across the whole directory. A 70 means the same thing on any listing, which is the only reason a single number is worth showing. It is relative, not absolute, and the inputs are estimates that update over time, so treat a two-point difference as noise and compare across the grade bands.

Higher is generally stronger. It is not the column that should decide a purchase, for a reason covered in the next section.

Read it alongside three others:

• Age and snapshots together. A long, continuous archive record is stronger evidence of a real site than an old registration date. A domain that sat registered and unused has the date without the history.
• Referring domains, not backlinks. One link each from 40 sites beats 400 links from one. Referring domains vs backlinks covers why.
• Linked by. The named sources are the most useful column on the row and the least numeric.

Why does relevance beat the score?

A domain with a moderate score and links from pages about your subject is usually worth more to you than a higher-scoring domain from an unrelated one. The links were placed by editors writing about something. When the destination is about something else, the endorsement does not carry.

Worked through for a software product:

• Good fit: history in developer forums, technical publications, documentation of tools that integrated with it
• Poor fit: history in gardening blogs or recipe sites, however strong the Revised Score

Google's own framing is the same test from the other side. Its expired domain abuse policy turns on a thematic mismatch plus low-value content, so a domain whose past matches what you publish is both the better asset and the safer one.

The category hubs do the first half of that check for you: every listing is categorised from its archived content, so a domain is filed under what it used to be.

What does the spam screen cover, and what should you still check?

Every listing is screened before it goes live, and the result is published as a column rather than hidden: blocklist flags, spam signals and adult-content history. As of 16 September 2026, 9,541 listings (84%) pass a low spam screen.

The screen is not a substitute for looking. Three things it does not decide for you:

• Whether the history changed subject before the drop. Plenty of good domains spent their final two years hosting whatever the previous owner could sell. The links from that stretch point at that content.
• Whether the anchor text reads organically. Varied anchors across many sites look earned. The same phrase everywhere is a signal of past manipulation.
• Whether the source mix is diverse. Several source families reads more naturally than everything arriving from one place.

How to evaluate an expired domain's link history is the long version of that check, and how to check backlink quality covers the per-link version.

How do you filter the grid?

The rail groups filters into four sections:

• Basics: TLD, category, and the source that links to a domain
• Quality: minimum Agent Citability, a Revised Score floor, referring-domain bands, and spam signal
• History: minimum age in years, and how recently availability was checked
• Value: estimated-value range, and a featured-only toggle

Text search, every filter and every sort are free, signed in or not. What a plan buys is reveals, CSV export, the API and saved views.

Agent Citability deserves one note, because it is the filter people misread. It is a 0 to 100 measure of how deeply the trusted layer of the web references a domain: reference works, academic and government sites, editorial newsrooms. It measures citability, not citations. The methodology is published and the weights are not, and a score can fall as well as rise between releases.

Using the Revised directory for this

A shortlist worth spending reveals on, in order:

1. Open the directory and set TLD and Category in Basics to your subject. Or start from a hub: aged domains, dropped names, Revised Score 65 and over, or a source hub for a linking source you trust.
2. Set a Referring domains floor. Ten distinct linking sites removes most of any list.
3. Set Spam signal to low. That is the 84% above.
4. Sort by Ref. domains rather than by score, then read Linked by down the column and keep the rows whose sources you recognise.
5. Open the listing pages of what survives and read the archived timeline. One subject held over years is what you want.
6. Reveal the best two or three. A free account gets 5 reveals a month on non-featured listings; Starter raises that to 30 and opens featured listings at 3 credits each; Pro gives 250 with featured at 1 credit; Business has no reveals and shows every name. Every plan can read the same directory over the API, or point an agent at it over MCP. The plans page has the detail.

Before you register anything, run the revealed name through the expired domain checker for the history and the backlink checker for the referring domains, and confirm availability yourself at a registrar.

Two practical notes. We cannot reserve a name, and a domain can be registered by someone else between our last availability check and yours, so act promptly on a reveal. Re-opening a name you have already revealed is free, forever.

FAQ

Do I need an account to browse the directory? No. Searching, filtering, sorting and reading a listing page are free and need no account, and around a third of listings publish their name outright. An account is needed only to reveal a masked name, because reveals are counted per account.

How many domains can I reveal for free? Five a month on a free account, on non-featured listings, on top of the free listings that need no reveal at all. Starter is 30 a month, Pro is 250, and both include featured listings; Business has no reveals and shows every name.

Should I pick the domain with the highest Revised Score? Usually not. The score compares link strength across the whole directory and says nothing about whether the links are about your subject. A moderate score with on-topic referring domains beats a high score from an unrelated niche.

What does the estimated value mean? It is a model comparison figure for ranking listings against each other. It is not an asking price, we do not charge it, and we do not sell, hold or register the domains we list. Registering a revealed name is ordinary registrar work at whatever registrar you prefer.

What happens after I reveal a name? You get the full registrable name and one reveal comes off the month's allowance. Register it at any registrar, then decide what to do with it: redirect it to a matching page, or rebuild a small site on its old subject.