In 2022, the author purchased the domain musicbox.fun for an online music box project. However, the domain had a past reputation for hosting pirated music, leading to a drop in organic search traffic after redirection. The author refers to this as the domain being “haunted.” To check if a domain is haunted, one can use the Wayback Machine and search for DMCA complaints. Remedies include improving SEO practices, talking to search engines, and possibly waiting for the domain’s reputation to recover. The author is cautiously optimistic about restoring traffic to musicbox.fun but acknowledges the challenges of dealing with haunted domain names.
https://www.bryanbraun.com/2024/10/25/before-you-buy-a-domain-name-first-check-to-see-if-its-haunted/