Answers
What is a due diligence checklist for buying a content website?
Short answer: Check 16 to 24 months of Search Console clicks against Google's update dates, earnings in each ad and affiliate dashboard matched to deposits, how much income a few pages carry, the domain's history and manual actions, who writes the content and at what cost, and which accounts transfer. Then price a traffic drop before you offer.
What should you check before buying a content website?
Content and affiliate sites fail buyers in predictable ways: traffic that falls after a Google update, earnings that came from one programme or one page, a domain with a history, and writing costs nobody counted. The 14 checks below cover those, in roughly the order to do them. Ask for read-only access rather than screenshots throughout: Search Console's restricted user role and Google Analytics' Viewer role both exist for this.
Which traffic and search checks come first?
- Search Console clicks for 16 to 24 months, by month, from the property itself.
- Overlay Google's update dates from the Search Status Dashboard on those clicks (how).
- Manual actions report in Search Console: it should say no issues detected.
- Page concentration: what share of clicks and income the top five pages carry.
- Analytics against Search Console: organic sessions far above search clicks need an explanation (botted traffic).
How do you check a content site's income?
- Earnings in each ad and affiliate dashboard, viewed live, by month, for 12 to 24 months; paid, not pending.
- Deposits in the bank or PayPal matching those payments.
- Programme concentration and each programme's terms on transfer (affiliate income, AdSense).
- Tracking IDs on the live pages belong to this site's accounts.
What should you check about the domain, content and costs?
- Wayback Machine history: same topic for as long as the listing claims (domain history).
- Backlinks: no obvious link schemes, which Google's spam policies prohibit.
- Who writes, at what cost: writer invoices, and how much content was AI-written or bought.
- Owner hours and every recurring tool, hosting and plugin cost.
- Transfer list: domain, hosting, email list, social accounts, content files, and a handover period in the purchase agreement.
How do you price the search risk into an offer?
A composite content site earns $2,600 a month in revenue and $2,200 in profit, 85% of it from organic search, and asks $62,000 (28.2 months). Checks 1 and 2 show clicks dipped after a core update and partly recovered. In the traffic-drop test, a further 35% fall in search revenue leaves $1,427 a month of profit and stretches payback to 43.5 months.
Composite example, run through the traffic-drop test
| Monthly revenue | $2,600 |
|---|---|
| Monthly profit | $2,200 |
| Share of revenue from organic search | 85% |
| Assumed fall in search revenue | 35% |
| Asking price | $62,000 |
| Payback as listed | 28.2 months |
| Revenue lost each month | $774 |
| Profit after the fall | $1,427 |
| Payback after the fall | 43.5 months |
| Annual multiple after the fall | 3.62× |
| Search fall that wipes out all profit | 100% |
If you would not accept 43.5 months, the gap between the two figures is what you negotiate, or what you cover with an earnout tied to traffic.
Frequently asked questions
How long does due diligence on a content site take?
For a site under about $100,000 with access granted promptly, the checks above take a few days of work. Most delays come from waiting for access to Search Console and the income dashboards.
What access should I ask a content site seller for?
Restricted user access in Search Console, Viewer access in Google Analytics, and a live screen share of each ad and affiliate dashboard and the bank or PayPal account the payments reach.
What is the biggest risk when buying a content site?
Dependence on Google search. A single core or spam update can cut traffic and income, so overlay update dates on 16 to 24 months of clicks and price a traffic fall before you offer.
Sources
- Search Console Help, Managing owners, users, and permissions, read 7 October 2026
- Search Console Help, Manual actions report, read 12 October 2026
- Google Search Status Dashboard, Ranking incident history, read 7 October 2026
- Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, read 12 October 2026
- Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search, read 12 October 2026
- FirstPass Memo, red-flag checker rules, our own rules, published as /rules.json
Related
- Was the site hit by a Google update?
- How to verify affiliate income
- Check a domain's history
- Traffic-drop test
- Is buying a content site worth it?
- How to value a website
- Glossary of listing terms
- More questions buyers ask
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Composite examples are invented and labelled. Figures from other sites are quoted with a link and the date we read them; FirstPass figures are asking prices and seller-stated profit, not sale prices. Informational screening only, not investment, legal or tax advice.