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Discussion on: My domain name and website content has been hijacked! What should I do?

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Ryan • Edited

Hopefully an SEO expert can explain better/correct me, but your domain would be valuable for its reputation. Doesn't have anything to do with traffic. Google et al. use an algorithm to determine a domain's trustworthiness, this in turn helps determine how much links from that domain are worth.

So if you have a legitimate domain, with legitimate content, with backlinks from reputable sites such as linkedin, that has existed for a long time, then your site would appear higher on search results, and links from that site would be worth more points in Google's rankings, than a site with the same traffic on a fresh domain.

Of course Google will adjust over time -- eventually it will learn your site is now a spam hole, so it's only a short-lived boost, but even that is valuable for spammers.

Not sure what you can do about it other than try to buy your domain back for some exorbitant price, or try reporting abuse to their host. These people are bloodsuckers.