Ask HN: Is it possible to clean up a penalised domain name?

[ra]

There's a domain name I'd like to buy for a project of mine, but it's currently being used to host porn ads and doesn't show up in google search for "exactdomain.com".

So I'm pretty sure it's flagged as spam.

My question is, is this domain still worth buying?

Will the transfer of ownership and usage "clean up" it's history?

The webapp I'd like to migrate to it currently has a couple of years of trading history, has nothing to do with porn and is very non-spammy. The last thing I want to do is hurt it's google SERP positions.

The reason I want the new domain is because our current one is not very memorable, and is difficult to type, and the new domain is an exact match for our product name.

[davidkrug]

Disavow dirty links or spammy links (heck all of them) submit for reinclusion. Then wait. If approved switch to new domain :)

[ASquare]

Would be a good question to cross post on Inbound.org - some pretty knowledgable SEOs hang out there...