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Comment by bhartzer | Hacker News Reader

They are not called “dropped domains”, the term used more often is “expired domains”. The author doesn’t even mention how registrars are a player and part of this, as they auction off the more valuable domains even before they are dropped.

Google has done a lot since 2011 to identify pbns and take them down. This article seems a bit outdated.

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Agreed. Also the forum he's referencing to is BlackHatWorld for those curious.

It's well known that some of the sellers on there are artificially inflating their views and replies, and a few of the top sellers are probably using hacked logins to write reviews (their database was leaked a few years ago: https://hacked-emails.com/leak/8bf5ed9ca2ea1b009c1b/blackhat...)

For example, take a look at this thread: https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/captain-jack-sparrow-2019-...

Thousands of replies that all sound very similar "Order confirmed Transaction ID: XXX"

Their job is to automatically distribute content on fake blogs and fake social media profiles, not too far out to think they do the same with their own services, pumping them with comments from fake profiles.

The first post on the first page of that thread is an interesting read, what a way to market your services.

> They are not called “dropped domains”, the term used more often is “expired domains”.

Well they obviously are if they're called something else more frequently. But I've heard them called both, interchangeably with equal frequency. I think this is a bit nitpicky

> they auction off the more valuable domains even before they are dropped.

Ummm... even before they expire? :)

A domain goes through various stages before it becomes available for registration again. They are auctioning them after expiration but before general availability.

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