The $10 Canonical Loop: How Expired Domains Are Outranking You in Every Market
A domain name costs about $10. That is the entire marginal cost of the spam that is outranking legitimate sites in every market Timothy Malmros has checked. I have been doing SEO for close to twenty years. I still have conversations that shift how I see the search landscape, and my Unscripted SEO Podcast episode with Timothy was one of them. He spent nearly two decades in gambling affiliate SEO,…
Expired domains can outrank legitimate sites due to their accumulated authority, costing only about $10 per domain. Timothy Malmros, with nearly two decades of experience in gambling affiliate SEO, explains the loop: buy an expired, high-authority domain, bombard it with spam links, redirect to a fresh domain, and repeat. This tactic is worldwide and has no solution in place.
The canonical tag, when used as specified, benefits from Google's grace period, during which it can rank despite being spam. This spamming technique exploits link-based ranking, as content quality cannot differentiate in many cases. Automated spam link networks amplify the issue, pushing legitimate sites under review. The decline in manual spam-fighting capacity due to Google's focus on AI also contributes to the persistence of this tactic.
Additionally, click metrics, which can be bought, further enable the success of these fakes. To combat this, those running real sites should understand this mechanism and take necessary precautions.
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