DomCop Review PROS & CONS (2023) | DomCop vs Domain Hunter Gatherer

DomCop

8.7

Easy to use

9.5/10

Settings

9.0/10

Price

7.1/10

Overall quality

9.2/10

Pros

• Domain Crawler
• Huge number of metrics
• Web based so no need to install anything
• Search results and metrics are instant without need to wait
• Add domains to watchlist and receive daily notifications
• Very easy to use with no learning curve
• You can export domains

Cons

• No free trial
• Pricing plans are not cheap
• Only 2 day money back guarantee

Learn More!

Are you interested in buying expired domains? Do you want to get the best domains with the best metrics? Have access to each domain’s backlinks, domain age, Majestic, Moz metrics, and other useful information?

Unfortunately, this often means searching tirelessly for hours, days, or even weeks until you find the perfect domain that meets your needs. Sorting through hundreds or thousands of domains just to find the right one can be very frustrating.

Checking Wayback Machine, checking domain links to make sure they’re valid, and reviewing their anchor text takes valuable time away. That time would be better spent on tasks such as conducting outreach and doing research.

I use services like DomCop and Domain Hunter Gatherer to find and buy expired domains with traffic. They’re a great time-saver, and they allow me to see many expired domains along with various metrics.

Using DomCop to find this information gives me a good overall look at each potential domain before I make a buying decision.

DomCop Review – What is DomCop?

DomCop is a popular tool used to search for expired domains. One-click of the mouse will display domains and handy metrics including:

DomCop can be used to find the following kinds of domains:

• Buy Now Domains – domains that can be purchased immediately.
• Domains in Auctions – these domains can be bid on. You win the domain if you have the highest bid in the auction.
• Domains Pending Delete – you can place a backorder domain request with any service that you select.
• Expired Domains – these domains can be bought from the registrar that you choose, as long as the domain is still available.
• Pre-Release Domains – these are auctions for pending delete domains.
• Crawled Domains (requires DomCop Guru plan) – purchasing the Guru plan gives you access to this feature. It crawls the Web for you and finds broken links associated with expired domains that have useful metrics.

DomCop doesn’t sell domains. It shows domains in the category types listed above. From there, you can buy them using a backordering service, through a registrar or from an auction site.

What Are The Advantages of Using DomCop Over Competition?

There are a few things that help DomCop stand out above the competition:

1. DomCop is the only domain search website that uses metrics such as DomainScope, Estibot, SimilarWeb, etc. alongside with Moz, Majestic, and SEMrush metrics.
2. It will show you a vast number of metrics on one page.
3. New features are continually being added based on user feedback.

DomCop gets metric information from several third-party sources. This means that their customers will always have the most timely and accurate metric information. It also means customers will spend less time hunting for expired domains manually.

Most of DomCop’s competitors don’t have access to these metric resources. DomCop’s developers spend considerable time and effort in ensuring that they provide their users with the most comprehensive expired domain lists available.

Metrics are updated many times during a domain’s lifecycle. DomCop currently updates domain metrics at the following intervals:

• When the domain is first imported into the system
• Alexa, Majestic and Moz metrics are updated every seven days

Despite the fact that that Moz and Majestic metrics change daily, DomCop updates Moz and Majestic data every seven days. Because of this, you may see some data mismatches between the metrics on DomCop and on the Moz and Majestic website.

Fortunately, these numbers shouldn’t change much for most domains, so it shouldn’t be a problem unless the particular domain happens to lose its backlinks quickly.

What are the Moz Metrics?

Moz is a company that provides metric information for a large number of websites. Their metrics are:

• MozRank – this is a link popularity score that can range from 1 to 10. Pages and domains earn MozRank based on how many pages they link to and the quality of those pages. An average MozRank score is around 3.
• MozRank (www) – This is a MozRank for the www subdomain of a site.
• Combined MozRank – This MozRank is a single value, after combining all of the root domain’s pages.
• Combined MozRank (www) – This MozRank is also a single value that combines all of a www subdomain’s pages.
• MozTrust – This is Moz’s global link score, which also ranges from 1 to 10. The score evaluates all links a domain has from reputable websites.
• MozTrust (www) – This is the MozTrust score for a site’s www subdomain.
• Domain Authority – Domain Authority shows you how well a particular domain can do in search engine rankings. Scores for this metric range from 0 to 100. Domain Authority is difficult to influence directly. It’s not impossible, but spammers generally have a harder time trying to fake higher Domain Authority scores.
• Page Authority – Page Authority tells how well a certain web page can do in search engine rankings. It’s not as useful as Domain Authority regarding expired domains, because Page Authority only predicts probabilities for a single page. Scores for this metric also range from 0 to 100.
• Total Domains – This is how many domains there are with backlinks to the root domain.
• Total Domains (www) – This is the number of domains that backlink to the www subdomain.
• Total Backlinks – This is how many backlinks Moz has identified for a particular domain.
• Total Backlinks (E) – This tells you how many backlinks pass equity to the root web domain.
• Total Backlinks to Subdomain (E) – This shows you the number of backlinks that pass equity back to the web subdomain.

When you’re evaluating domain metrics, you will find domains that have low Domain Authority score and high Page Rank scores and vice versa. If this happens, take some time to investigate the possible causes of such discrepancies.

It’s possible that Moz may not have included that particular domain in its index. The domain you’re reviewing could also possibly be a scam domain. Good domains tend to have Domain Authority scores of at least 30 or higher.

What are the Majestic Metrics?

Majestic is one of the biggest and most popular tools. The metrics they provide are:

• Trust Flow – Trust Flow evaluates the trustworthiness of each domain, according to the websites that link back to that particular domain. Trust Flow scores range from 0 to 100. Scores increase with the number of backlinks that are considered to be from reputable websites.
• Citation Flow – Citation Flow predicts the value of a web domain based on its backlinks. Citation Flow scores also range from 0 to 100 and can be used to compare backlinks for different domains. This metric is similar to Moz Domain Authority.
• Trust Flow/Citation Flow ratio –  Domains with a very low Trust Flow to Citation Flow ratio may be scammy sites. Citation Flow can be much easier to manipulate than Trust Flow. Any domains with Trust Flow/Citation Flow scores of 0.8 and lower should be skipped.
• Links – This shows how many backlinks there are to either the root or www subdomain.
• Domains – This is how many referring domains there are with backlinks to www subdomain or root web domain.
• IPs – This is the number of unique IP addresses with domains that link back either to the root web domain or www subdomain.
• Subnets – This tells you how many unique subnets have domains with backlinks either to the www subdomain or root domain.
• EDU Domains – This shows you how many EDU domains have backlinks to the root domain or www subdomain.
• EDU Links – This is the number of backlinks from EDU domains to either the www subdomain or the root domain.
• GOV Domains – This metric tells you how many GOV domains there are that link back to either the root or the www subdomain.
• GOV Links – This is the number of backlinks from GOV domains with backlinks to the www subdomain or root domain.
• Topical Trust Flow – Majestic will display various categories for the backlinks that belong to domains that passed the trust flow. You can use this information to learn what industry a domain is in, based on its backlinks.

What are the SEMRush Metrics?

SEMRush is a metric company that provides information on traffic costs, the total number of searches conducted monthly, and the keywords that different domains have ranked for. Their metrics are:

• SEMRush Rank – This is a rank of the domain based on total searches that the domain ranks for.
• Keywords – This tells you how many keywords a domain ranks for.
• Monthly Organic Traffic – This shows you the total monthly traffic for a domain, according to SERP ranking data.
• Cost of Traffic – This is the total cost of traffic entering a website. This information is based on user locations, the cost per keyword click, and total site traffic.
• Keyword Data – Here, you’ll see the top five keywords that a searched domain ranks for. You’ll also see data on its search volume, competition, cost per click numbers, position, and the URL that the keywords rank for.

Which Metrics to Look When Buying Expired Domains? Ahrefs, Moz, SEMRush, or Some Other?

No metric is perfect. All of them can be manipulated. But it’s difficult to manipulate them all at the same time. The best solution is to use multiple metric sources.

If a web domain has a low Domain Authority score and a high Trust Flow, it should be investigated to find the reasons behind the difference.

The same logic should be applied to Ahrefs Domain Rating. SimilarWeb and SEMRush Rank metrics should only be used for domains that receive organic web traffic.

Ideally, the domains that you purchase need to be spam-free and have great backlinks from sites that are in the same niche or industry. Each domain that you are buying should have as much as possible backlinks from unique IP addresses.

I would recommend using either Ahrefs, Majestic, or Moz to find all of a domain’s backlinks. Using the Topical Trust Flow category (one of Majestic’s metrics) can show you the niches for each backlink that a particular domain has. All of the topical trust flow categories are listed here.

Metrics can help you determine a domain’s value. You can sort through thousands of domains efficiently to find the right ones to meet your needs. Just make sure that you check backlinks manually for each domain that you’re considering before buying them.

This is one of the most important considerations in buying expired domains. Remember, metrics are never going to be entirely fool-proof.

Review each potential domain to ensure that they don’t link to a private blog network (PBN) and that there are no spammy links. You can find a domain’s history by using the Internet Archive website (Wayback Machine).

If a domain looks like it may have spammy links, was part of a private blog network or contains unusual foreign language in its history information, skip it and move on to the next domain that you’re considering.

The last thing to do is to check to see whether or not the domain has been indexed. If you buy an unindexed domain from an auction, this means that the domain was penalized.

You can’t find this information by using the Google index, because any domains that have been expired or listed as “Pending Delete” are instantly removed from that index.

If you run a “site:domain.com” search in Google and don’t find the domain you’re interested in, then that domain hasn’t been indexed.

NOTE: As of June 2019, DomCop no longer offers Ahrefs metrics. You can find more information about the reasons here.

How DomCop Works?

People who want to increase their website SERP rating purchase expired domains because of their backlinks. Over 200,000 domains expire every day. It’s almost impossible to review the backlinks for each expired domain manually.

DomCop will show you a list of these expired domains along with helpful metric data for each domain. You can use this metric information to reduce this staggering list of thousands sites down to a select few domains that meet your criteria. A task that would usually take hours now only takes minutes to complete.

Companies that supply metric information (Majestic, Moz, etc.) charge DomCop for their services. DomCop uses the API from each of these companies and provides you with their metrics.

DomCop also partners with new metric companies as they enter the market so that you have the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available. This resource can help you save time and money in finding the best domains for your niche or industry.

DomCop domains appear in three different lists:

• Expiring Domains – This list shows all domains that are either in an auction or are in a Pending Pre-Release or Pending Delete status.
• Expired Domains – This list reveals domains whose auctions have ended and domains that have just expired. DomCop works tirelessly to keep this information updated as soon as expired domains drop.
• Archived Domains – This list shows you all of the domains that have expired during the year. DomCop uses a crawling service to add another 10,000 to 50,000 available domains to this list daily.

Types of Searches

There are three types of searches that you can use in DomCop. Those are Common Search, Simple Search, and Advanced Search.

1. Using the Common Search

The Common Search is used most often by people who are new to searching for expired domains. A drop-down list will display sets of common searches.

This can be a good starting point if you don’t know what metrics to look for. Common searches find domains that have high domain authority, high trust flow, etc.

You can use the Simple or Advanced search options to have more control over your searches.

2. Using the Simple Search

Simple Searches allow you to explore some of the most used metric categories. It’s a powerful search function that’s incredibly easy to use.

Sliders can be used to search for various metrics including Domain and Page Authority, Moz Rank, Domain Length, Domain Age, Majestic Citation and Trust Flows, Open Page Rank, Moz and Majestic Links, Domain Industry, Domain Price, Time to expire or Time since expiration, Domain Source, Domain Extensions, Listing Type, Keyword and Pattern Search, and Miscellaneous Options.

3. Using the Advanced Search

The Advanced Search feature lets users search every metric category that is offered.

These metrics include Domain Bids, Domain Price, Domain Age, Domain Length, Domain Source, all Moz metrics, all Majestic metrics, all SEMRush metrics, all Alexa metrics, all Social metrics, Domain Extensions, Domain Industry, Time to expire or Time since expiration, Listing Type, Keyword and Pattern Search, Open Page Rank and Miscellaneous Options.

DomCop Features

Certain domain metrics are displayed in the domain table to save screen space on your device. You can customize the columns to see all metrics or to see only certain metrics that you’re most interested in. Just drag and drop the columns that you want into the “Current Columns” section.

You can also keep an eye on domains by adding them to your watchlist. Click on the domain that you want. Then, all you have to do is click on the “Add to WatchList” option. Domains that you’ve selected will appear in your watchlist for as long as you want them to.

You can also save your search preferences so that you don’t need to go back and change your search parameters regularly. To start a saved search, begin a Simple or Advanced search in any one of the three lists. Choose the “Saved Search” option and enter a name for your search.

You can also decide whether or not you want to receive daily emails with information on domains that meet your search criteria. Your saved searches will then appear in the drop-down menu on the top of the page.

Email notifications are associated with your saved searches. You should see the “Daily Email” notification option every time you modify or begin a search. Selecting “Yes” will send daily emails to your inbox with domains that match your search parameters.

Only domains that have two days remaining until the expiry date (or before their auction ends) will be listed. This is done to avoid duplicating domains. Option is only activated for searches that you’ve saved in the Expiring section.

You can export domains. Click on the “Export Domains” button to export the data. You can choose to receive your information using one of the following CSV report types: Comma Separated, Semi-Colon Separated, or Tab Separated.

You can also decide what kind of data you want to export. Click on the “Send by Email” option if you wish to receive the download link via email. A message will then be sent to your email address with a link for the file download.

Select the “Download” option if you want to download the file from the site directly. The page will refresh automatically every 30 seconds until your report is ready to be downloaded. Each exported file can contain up to 10,000 records. There’s no limit to the number of files that you can export.

DomCop Pricing Plans

DomCop doesn’t offer a free trial or a free plan. They have paid plans with a two-day money-back guarantee for new users. To get a full refund, you must email them within two days of your plan purchase. The guarantee only applies to brand new subscribers.

You can have two people using the same account as some companies may hire a freelancer to assist them with their expired domain searches.

DomCop offers three pricing tiers. Those are the Newbie plan, the Power Plan, and the Guru plan. Each plan can be paid monthly or annually (annual option is cheaper):

• The Newbie plan gives users access to the Expiring domains section ($56/month).
• The Power plan grants access to the Archived, Expired, and Expiring sections ($98/month).
• The Guru plan gives users access to the Archiving, Expired and Expiring sections as well as the Personal expired domains crawler ($184+/month).

Guru Plan

The Guru plan has three pricing subsets. Each Guru plan allows you to create jobs using crawlers to search various websites and return with lists of expired domains that only you will have access to:

• Guru Plan I: $184/month, gives users 10 crawlers per month.
• Guru Plan II: $372/month, gives users 30 crawlers per month.
• Guru Plan III: $556/month, gives users 50 crawlers per month.

Each Guru plan gives users a set number of crawlers per month that they can use. The Guru Plan III allows for 50 crawlers that can be used to crawl 50 different websites per month. There’s no limit to the number of sites you can crawl or the number of jobs that you can set up.

Crawlers work differently than DomCop expired domain lists. Instead of inspecting backlinks for expired domains, crawlers will find good broken backlinks and then look to see if that particular domain can be purchased.

If a link is broken, the crawler will see if the domain is available. If the domain can be bought, the crawler will return with all of the typical DomCop domain metrics that you’d expect (Alexa, Majestic, Moz, SimilarWeb, SEMRush, etc.) This process is also known as expired domains mining.

Each expired domain that the crawler returns is only available to you. Your list of expired domains isn’t shared with any other user. After you’ve purchased a Guru plan, you will see a link at the top of your screen entitled “Crawler Dashboard.”

This screen will be empty after you log in the first time. You’ll see more statistical information on this page once your personal crawler starts crawling websites and finding domains for you.

Select the “Create new crawl job” option to begin a web crawl. From there, you’ll be redirected to a page where you can choose the type of crawl that you want:

• Keyword Search – This kind of job allows you to crawl all sites that appear in Google search engine results for targeted keywords. You can enter up to 20 keywords at a time.
• Niche Website – Choose your niche from the list that’s provided. The crawler will crawl random websites based on your niche.
• Reverse Website – You can use this job to crawl websites that connect to either a single site or a set of websites. You can enter competitor websites or websites in a similar niche.
• Website Crawl – The default crawl assignment. You can enter various websites and have the crawler search for all of them.

DomCop PROS & CONS

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of using DomCop:

DomCop CONS

• There is no free trial option
• Pricing plans are not for every pocket
• There is only 2-day money-back guarantee to new customers which is not enough time to test if the tool is right for your needs

DomCop PROS

• DomCop provides a huge number of metrics from several sources
• Expired Domain Crawler option in Guru plan can be used to crawl websites and find broken backlinks
• It is web-based so no need to install anything
• Add domains to watchlist
• Save your search preferences
• Receive daily email notifications
• Export domains

DomCop vs. Domain Hunter Gatherer | Which is Better For Finding Expired Domains?

DomCop is the most recommended tool for people who want to find quality expired domains quickly. A popular feature is the ability to sort information according to standard search engine optimization metrics.

This ensures that you’ll get only the best results. API information is gathered from various sources. The tool takes the stress out of searching for valuable expired domains. There are other methods, but none of them are as effective as DomCop.

Domain Hunter Gatherer is another popular expired domain search tool. Expired domains can help you stay ahead of competitors.

Domain Hunter Gatherer has several features that make finding expired domains easier. It gives users helpful metric data, and its simple interface provides functions that allow users to access high quality, well-aged expired domains.

• Name
• Price
• Free Plan
• Need to install softwear
• Proxies needed
• Filter domain option
• Domain auction

  See all domain available on all auction sites
• Expiring domains

  Domains that are in a Pending Pre-Release or Pending Delete status.
• Expired domains

  See domains whose auctions have ended and domains that have just expired.
• Archived domains

  See domains that have expired during the year.
• Expired Web 2.0 sites

  Find expired web 2.0 sites like Tumblr, HubPages, Blogspot, Weebly, WordPress, etc.
• Find expired domains from websites

  Enter a website(s) name and let the tool crawl them to find expired domains.
• Reverse domain hunt

  Find available domains with links from pages that link to competitors’ websites.
• Find expired domains using keywords

  Enter a specific keyword or keywords and search expired domains from search engines.
• Crawl niche websites

  Choose your niche from the list that’s provided. The crawler will crawl random websites based on your niche.
• Recovering domain from Wayback Machine

  Recover how the domain looked like before it went offline from Wayback Machine. It saves all captured content, including themes and styles.
• Add domain to watchlist
• Email notifications

  Daily emails to your inbox with domains that match your search parameters.
• Export domains
• Domain age
• Ahrefs metrics
• Moz metrics
• Majestic metrics
• Alexa metrics
• Open PageRank metrics
• SimilarWeb metrics
• SEMrush metrics
• Social shares metrics
• Domain spam score
• Domain info

  Domain source, length, has dashes or digits, adult name, domain extension, total pages indexed by Google, pages in Google News, etc.
• DomainScope metrics
• Estibot metrics
• Whois/Wayback metrics

• DOMAIN HUNTER GATHERER
• Profesional plan with all features is $97/month

  There is also Platinum plan for $17/month with very limited options
• Very limited

Learn More

• DOMCOP
• Guru plan with all features is $184+/month

  There are also Newbie plan which gives users access to the Expiring domains section ($56/month). The Power plan grants access to the Archived, Expired and Expiring sections ($98/month).

Learn More

The main difference is that Domain Hunter Gatherer (DHG) needs to be installed on your computer while for DomCop you only need to login to your account and start searching for expired domains.

The second significant difference between DomCop and DHG is that when you perform a search on DomCop, you get results instantly as well as all metrics while using Domain Hunter Gatherer, you need to wait for results and metrics for hours or even days depending on your search parameters.

Also, DomCop offers considerable number of metrics while DHG offers only a few. To use DHG, it is recommended that you purchase proxies; otherwise, the tool will not work as intended, while for DomCop, that is not needed.

DomCop doesn’t have any settings you need to mess with, while DHG has setting options that can confuse users (though it will work just fine without the need to touch software settings).

DHG has a very limited free pricing plan with which you basically can’t do anything, while DomCop has no free option. In terms of pricing, they come close. DHG is cheaper, and there are often 20-50% off discounts on DHG plans.

But DomCop justifies its price taking into consideration what it brings to the table. If choosing between DomCop and Domain Hunter Gatherer, I would recommend going with DomCop.

DomCop Review Conclusion

There are several reasons why domains expire. Most common are that the site owner may have forgotten to renew or didn’t want to renew the domain.

Hundreds of thousands of expired domains exist. Did you know that you can take advantage of this opportunity? If you’re starting your own website, you can capitalize on buying expired domains that match your niche or industry.

The expired domain market is vast. Website owners and search engine optimization experts understand the importance of using expired domains to increase traffic to their primary money-making sites.

Many site owners buy expired domains every day to build their affiliate sites and private blog networks.

Expired web domains are always in high demand. Buying a website that already has excellent backlinks and existing targeted web traffic for around the same price as a new domain is a tremendous opportunity.

You can create your own robust private blog network or purchase expired domains to craft a new authority site in your area of expertise. Whatever you do, it’s hard to ignore the power and potential that expired domains offer.