Each day, twenty thousand plus domain names expire and become available for anyone to register. This is valuable information if you are seeking a domain to help you boost an existing site’s traffic, or even if you are just looking to resell domain names for a profit..Expiring domain names have been owned by at least one person in the past. This owner may have built a Web site, advertised it, submitted it to the search engines, or traded links with another Web site owner. So, why would anyone who made any kind of effort with a domain name simply let it expire? Well, here are just a few reasons:

The previous owner lost interest.

A company went out of business.

Someone simply forgot to renew the registration.

The previous owner could not afford the annual fees.

For whatever reason, that domain is now available for the taking; and you can take advantage of all that work the last owner put into marketing the domain. You could point it at your existing domain, or build a new site.
So, how do you know if a domain name even has expired traffic?
While you can never tell the amount of traffic that is going to come from an expired domain name, there are some factors you can use to gauge this. Here are a few:

Link Popularity

Link popularity tells you the number of URL’s that link to a specific domain name. Basically, the more links coming to a domain name the higher the link popularity and the higher the chance it is generating good traffic. Additionally, a domain name with high link popularity has a better chance of receiving better quality traffic.

Use our free link popularity tool

Alexa Rank

The Alexa rank is a measurement of a domain’s unique visitor traffic and page views. The Alexa toolbar tracks how many users visit a domain and grades those visits as rank. Alexa will normally drop an expired domain name after seeing no page view traffic for 3 months. So, if there happens to be a related Alexa rank, this is a definitive resource for traffic.

Now if that Alexa rank is 1,000,000 or higher, then the domain is really not receiving any traffic. You should look for a domain with at least 100,000; that should translate into at least 2 visitors a day.

Google PageRank

Google PageRank is a value from 1 to 10 that expresses the popularity of a domain name based upon how many quality Web pages are linking into a particular domain name. PageRank can be used for two main reasons when acquiring an expired domain name:

Building a Web site to boost your main Web site’s PageRank with Google.

Taking advantage of the traffic coming from the inbound links. If you have the Google toolbar installed, you can discover an expired domain’s PageRank by typing the URL into your Web browser’s address bar and looking for the PageRank to appear.

Try using this tool as well

Yahoo and Dmoz Listings

The previous domain owner may have been approved by a Dmoz editor, or even paid for inclusion into a search engine like Yahoo or Looksmart. When you acquire a domain name that is expiring, you inherit these listings as well. Do the research and search the directory for the name by simply typing in the full URL for the domain.

A listing in any of the top ten search engines will not guarantee traffic, but will give you a better chance of receiving quality traffic. At the very least you can usually turn these domains around and sell them for the value of the directory listings.

We have published a list of daily expiring domains names that have the tools in place for you to conduct all of this research for free.
As you can see, this is a very affordable way to gain near instant traffic for your Web site. Try to purchase domain names that are related to what kind of traffic you need. As an example; if you need Webmaster traffic, purchase domain names that have keywords that are appealing to a Webmaster, not a cook.