Good Characteristics Of Build A Niche Store (BANS) On Info Domains

In my last two posts; Why Were My BANS Sites Removed From Google’s Index and Why would BANS Sites On Info Domains Be Indexed, I talked about why eBay affiliate web sites built with the Build A Niche Store (BANS) script on domains with the INFO TLD may have been deindexed or removed from Google’s index. The first post focused on a laundry list of reasons for why Google may have deindexed my BANS sites. The second post looked at the possible reasons why Google may scrutinize INFO domains more so than domains built on other domain TLDs. In the second post I also looked at the potential implications of greater scrutiny from Google for web sites built with the Build A Niche Store (BANS) script.

In this post I want to look at the characteristics of web sites built with the Build A Niche Store script that have not been deindexed by Google. To find a large group of Build A Niche Store based web sites I used the following search string in Google search, "Powered by Build a Niche Store" inurl:".info" (leave the quotes in). This search query will not return every BANS site built on INFO domains. It will return a cross section of web sites built with the Build A Niche Store script that have left in the "Powered By Build A Niche Store" link.

When I did the first search for BANS sites using this search query there were 12,300 web sites indexed by Google that had the "Powered By build A Niche Store" link. Today, as I am writing this post that number has dropped by 500 to 11,800. What the drop in the number of BANS sites from this search query means would be pure speculation. I didn’t think to use the version of the query. So I do not have any base to directly draw a conclusion between domain TLDs with BANS sites on them. By the way there were a little over 500,000 BANS sites returned using the COM version of the query. But, the sites returned by the query included sites selling BANS, not just sites built with the Build A Niche Store script.

BANS Sites On INFO Domains Indexed By Google

The point of this  post is to compare and contrast the characteristics of BANS sites on INFO domains indexed by Google to the characteristics of my BANS sites that were removed from Google’s index. So, I have not spent any time looking at BANS sites built on other TLDs. As a reference point here are the 7 BANS sites that I built that were removed from Google’s index.

1. tennisequipmentstore.info
2. baseballbatstore.info
3. baseballequipmentstore.info
4. softballbatstore.info
5. emergencysurvivalsupplydepot.info
6. gpsgadgetstore.info
7. scubaandsnorkelingstore.info

The first five sites were built around May 1st, before Google went through its mass removal of INFO domains. The last two sites were built after Google purged INFO domains. GPS Gadget Store and Scuba and Snorkeling Store were each fully indexed by Google but only stayed indexed for about 10 days. The Baseball Bat Store, Softball Bat Store, Emergency Survival Supply Depot, and GPS Gadget Store all received traffic from Google. Not a lot of traffic, but some. Now, I realize these sites aren’t very pretty. At the time they were built I was focusing on building stores and not on making them look nice. The plan was to go back and make them pretty later.

Could these stores may simply be a victim of the Google sandbox? They are in high traffic niches and the keywords used are core keywords and not long tail . I had planned on completing the menus with long tail keywords. But, then the sites were deindexed. So, I haven’t bothered working on them any more.

So what are the characteristics of BANS sites on INFO domains that have not been deindexed by Google. I tried to look at the links and indexing for both Google and Yahoo on a mass scale using SEOQuake but keep getting flagged by both search engines. now keep in mind that I was not able to look at all 11,800 pages listed. But, from the pages that I looked at the best characteristics for BANS sites of INFO domains are as follows.

1. Domain Age: It seems that the older the domain the better off you are. For the INFO domains returned from the search query age seemed to play a significant role in that older domains had more links and a more targeted keywords. Nothing new here. But, realize we are looking for reasons why a site may not have been deindexed.
2. PageRank: I looked at several hundred BANS sites. The highest PR that I found was a PR 1. Now I was not able to look at all the sites returned as Google kept flagging my query. Some of the pages that were two years old did not have any page rank. I did find one site that had over 150,000 links showing in Yahoo. It was not even a PR0. Even my parked domains have a PR0.
3. Number of Menu Items (Keywords): The number of keyword menu items targeted seemed to play a significant role. For newer sites the fewer the better. The few older site I saw had 5 plus menu items. None of the sites I saw had significant keyword stuffing in the side store menu.
4. Number Of Links To Domain: Generally speaking most of the BANS sites I looked at had very few inbound links and even fewer had any authority links. Most of the sites listed had fewer than 20 links.
5. Custom Template: Some had custom templates and some did not. Whether a BANS store ran with a custom template or one of the default templates does not seem to play a significant role. But, there were a much greater number of BANS stores with customized templates.
6. Google Adsense: A large number of the sites had Google Adsense. I doubt this plays a role in whether or not a BANS site was removed from Google’s index.
7. Interlinking Between BANS Sites: There were a few BANS sites that were interlinked with a network of BANS stores. Although Google tends to penalize Blog Networks for interlinking that did not seem to be the case with the BANS stores interlinked in a similar fashio.
8. Showing eBay logo: Some BANS store showed the eBay logo but most did not. Could a visual inspector consider not placing an eBay logo on an eBay affiliate site deceptive? I do not know.
9. Amount of Page Content: Most BANS stores I looked at had little or no content. Almost all of the PR 1 stores had NO content.
10. Keyword Stuffed Content: Most content on BANS sites that I saw was keyword stuffed. As I said earlier I was not able to look at all of the sites.

Conclusions For Build A niche Store On Info Domains

I am taking this from the perspective that INFO domains are viewed by Google, to a certain degree, as spam domains. My perspective may be wrong. If you are using an INFO domain that is not aged you need to build it slowly. Build only 2 to 5 keyword targeted menu items. The same seems to be true for back links, build them slowly. I aggressively built link
s to all of my BANS sites. It does not seem to matter if you are using a custom or customized BANS template. But, due to the current nature of INFO domains and the likelihood that they will be kicked for visual inspection, I would customize the template a little.

Personally, I had expected there to be more BANS stores on INFO domains. I had hoped that I would find a few BANS stores on INFO domains with at least a PR 3. But, this does not seem to be the case. in my opinion if you expect to make money from a BANS store in the long run, I would not build it on an INFO domain. make the investment stick to a COM domain.

I just did the search query once more to see if Google would let me finish looking at the stores and there were only a little over 5000 pages returned. I am starting to be, strongly, of the opinion that BANS stores on INFO domains is a bad combination. If you have the choice build on COM domains or preowned domains then don’t bother with INFO domains. At least if you are having problems getting indexed or to rank you will have a piece of mind that the issue is not the TLD. You can’t change Google’s opinion about a TLD. But, you pretty damn near can make any other change necessary to get indexed and rank.

I am not against developing web sites with the Build A Niche Store script. I just don’t think BANS sites should be built on INFO domains.  Spend a few extra bucks and buy a COM or preowned domain. I wish I had.

Update: I just found one PR 2 BANS store on an INFO domain (diamondearringandnecklaceset.info). There is no content, it is using a customized default template, and only shows 13 yahoo domain links. Neither SEOQuake nor SEO for Firefox will give me the age of the site the site is about 1 year old. maybe there is hope yet. Well after a bit of investigation the sites PR2 seems to be due to two PR3 links from the comment section of ClickNewz.com.

If you know of any INFO domains that have a page rank of 3 and above please let me know about them in the comments section. I would especially like to see any INFO domains Build A Store Sites on them that are ranking higher than a PR 2. I just don’t think they exist.

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