How to buy PBN domains: where to find them and what to check

At a glance

• A PBN domain is an expired or expiring domain with real backlinks that you rebuild as a blog and link from to your own sites.
• We buy most PBN domains at expiring auctions and closeouts, and find them with a finder that lists those domains with filters.
• Vet every domain before you bid: title history, DR and referring domains, real backlinks, prior PBN use, archived content, anchors, link loss, drops and index status.
• Don’t buy ready-made PBN sites or PBN links. A network anyone can buy from is a public network, and it’s much easier to find.
• Spread purchases across popular registrars and different days, and expect 3 to 5 good domains a week at best.

What a PBN domain is

Search results for “buy PBN domains” are mostly sellers of PBN links. That’s a different product. This guide is for people who build and own their network.

Where to buy PBN domains

PBN domains come from the same places as any expired domain. What changes is how strict you are about the checks.

• Expiring auctions. When a domain’s owner doesn’t renew, many registrars list it in their own auction before it’s deleted. GoDaddy, Namecheap and Dynadot all run auctions for expiring domains. The domain hasn’t dropped, so it still has its links and index status. This is where most good domains sell, and where competition is highest.
• Closeouts. Some registrars sell domains that got no bids at auction as closeouts, at a fixed price, before deletion. It’s the cheapest way to get a domain that never dropped.
• Backorders and drops. If a domain is deleted, drop-catching services such as DropCatch, SnapNames and NameJet race to register it the moment it’s released. You can backorder through them or through a registrar.
• Brokers. If you have a big budget, a broker will source domains for you. In most cases finding and vetting your own is better value.

Our PBN guide’s line on this is the one we still follow: “We usually focus on auction and closeout domains.” For the full route map, see our guide on how to buy expired domains.

Finding candidates fast

Auctions list far too many domains to browse by hand. You need a tool that pulls the listings together and lets you filter them by metrics.

That’s what SEO Domain Finder does. It scrapes the registrars and lists auction and closeout domains, which you then filter by your own requirements: Domain Rating, referring domains, niche keywords, auction end time. It has a 7-day free trial, so you can test it before paying.

Use the filters to cut the list to domains that meet your minimums, then run the checklist below on each one. Expect most to fail.

The checklist before you bid

We do our research in Ahrefs, and Majestic or Semrush work for most steps too. Here’s the routine, in order, as a table you can copy:

Step	What to check	Pass	Where
1	The site title in the overview	A real title. A spammy title is often the last thing scraped before expiry, so skip the domain.	Ahrefs
2	Domain Rating and URL Rating	10 or more each	Ahrefs
3	Referring domains	10 or more	Ahrefs, Majestic, Semrush
4	Referring domains to referring IPs	Fewer than 10 referring domains per referring IP	Ahrefs, Majestic, Semrush
5	Where the backlinks come from	Real sites, not generic “top websites” lists	Ahrefs, Majestic, Semrush
6	Outgoing links in the archived pages	No odd outbound links that show the last owner used it as a PBN	Ahrefs, Wayback Machine
7	Archived content	Live within the last few years, with real content relevant to your niche	Wayback Machine
8	Anchor text	Nothing from or about pharma, adult or gambling	Ahrefs, Majestic, Semrush
9	Link loss	No large loss of backlinks in the last few months	Ahrefs, Majestic, Semrush
10	Times dropped	Fewer than 3	Domain history
11	Indexed	Shows up for site:domain.com (required for auction domains)	Google

Steps 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, 10 and 11 are the minimums from our PBN guide’s Expired Domains Checklist. Majestic Trust Flow and Citation Flow of at least 10 are a good cross-check on step 2.

A few notes from doing this a lot:

• You’re mostly buying the links, so step 5 deserves the most time. Some backlinks will be dead because the site is offline. Check that the live ones come from sites a real person would read.
• Recognising prior PBN use takes practice. Links in the old posts to unrelated commercial sites, with exact-match anchors, are the usual sign.
• A domain whose last real site was many years ago, with nothing since, takes more work to bring back. Prefer domains that were live recently.

Topical relevance is the check people skip most. It’s optional, but links from a blog in your niche are worth more than links from a generic one, and a domain whose old content matches your niche is easier to rebuild. Our guide puts it simply: “Always try to find domains related to your niche since topically relevant links are worth more than generic ones.” A local plumber’s old domain is a far better blog for a plumbing client than a stronger domain about video games.

If a domain fails any step, move on. There will be another auction tomorrow, and a bad domain costs more to fix than a good one costs to buy.

For a deeper look at each check, see how to check a domain’s history before you buy.

Domains “with traffic”

Some listings advertise traffic. For a PBN blog, traffic is a nice extra. The links are the reason to buy. Check the domain’s organic traffic history in Ahrefs or Semrush, and look at when it happened. Many marketplaces show a domain’s metrics at their peak, so a short spike years ago can look like steady traffic.

Once a domain expires, its pages go offline and its rankings fade. If you restore the old pages that had links, some visitors may come back. Buy for the backlink profile and treat any traffic as a bonus.

Don’t buy PBN sites or PBN links

Ready-made PBN sites and PBN links look like a shortcut. They’re the wrong purchase.

Our PBN guide answers the question directly. Should you buy PBN links? “Absolutely not.” The P stands for private. If anyone can buy a link on a network, it’s a public blog network, and those are much easier for Google to find and penalise. The same goes for buying a whole network someone else built: you don’t know who else knows about it, what it links to, or how it was set up.

Build your own network, and don’t sell links on it. Our breakdown of the cost of buying PBN links goes into the economics, and are PBNs worth it weighs the whole approach.

Buying without leaving a footprint

How you buy can link your domains together before you’ve built anything. Our PBN guide’s footprint checklist for domains:

• Use popular registrars such as Namecheap and Dynadot, and don’t keep every domain at one.
• Buy from different marketplaces.
• Don’t buy all your domains on the same day.

Then check each domain’s public registration record. Your name, company or address shouldn’t appear on any of them. Most registrars now include privacy for free, but not all hide everything, so look at what your record actually shows. Our article on domain privacy for a PBN explains what to look for.

Pace yourself, too. Plenty of people are doing this, so good domains need speed and some luck. Our guide’s benchmark: “You can be happy if you get 3-5 good domains per week.”

After you buy: hosting and setup

A good domain on the wrong hosting is wasted. If all your blogs share one host, they share IPs and nameservers, and that ties them together.

Easy Blog Networks

We built Easy Blog Networks for this step. Each blog sits on its own IP at a big-brand hosting provider such as Amazon Web Services, DigitalOcean or Rackspace, and uses that provider’s own nameservers. You add a blog by entering the domain and a blog title, and it’s set up on WordPress with a random theme, different plugins and randomized usernames. Plans start at US$39/month for 10 blogs, and there’s a 7-day free trial.

From there, restore the old pages that have links pointing to them, add your own content, and test the blog before you link to your money site. Our guide to how to build a PBN walks through the whole process.

FAQ

How much do PBN domains cost?

Most land between $50 and $250+, depending on the name and the backlink profile. Our full guide on how much a PBN domain costs has the budgets.

Does the domain name matter?

Less than the links, but a spammy or unrelated name is a bad sign. See does a PBN domain name matter.

How many PBN domains should I buy at once?

Buy as you find good ones, and spread purchases over days and registrars. Three to five good domains a week is a strong result.

Can I buy a ready-made PBN?

You can, but we wouldn’t. A network that’s for sale has been seen by other people, and you can’t check how it was built or what else it links to.

Should I buy aged domains for a PBN?

Age on its own adds little. What matters is an unbroken history with real links, which many aged domains have and many don’t. Our guide to buying aged domains explains how to tell the difference.

Is a domain with a high DR always a good PBN domain?

No. A high score with few real referring domains, or anchors from spam niches, is a warning sign. Run the whole checklist, not only the metrics.