SPUNK13 · 8 min read · rev. 2026-08
Most website-buying regret comes from skipping verification. A seller's screenshots are not evidence. Before you wire money, confirm these 21 things yourself — with your own eyes on the real accounts, not a PDF.
Traffic (1–6)
- 1. Live Google Analytics access, not screenshots.
- 2. Google Search Console — impressions, clicks, and manual-action notices.
- 3. Traffic sources: is it diversified or 100% organic?
- 4. 12-month trend, not a cherry-picked good month.
- 5. Top pages — is the whole business one lucky article?
- 6. Traffic quality: bounce, geography, and bot filtering.
Revenue (7–12)
- 7. Screen-share into every income dashboard (ad network, affiliate, Stripe).
- 8. Payout history matches the claimed revenue.
- 9. Revenue concentration — one program or many?
- 10. Are affiliate/ad accounts transferable, or will they reset on sale?
- 11. Refund/chargeback rate for product income.
- 12. Real net profit after every cost — your SDE, not revenue.
Content & tech (13–17)
- 13. Content ownership — written in-house or unlicensed/AI-scraped?
- 14. Plagiarism/duplicate check on top pages.
- 15. Backlink profile — natural, or a PBN/paid links that risk a penalty.
- 16. Tech stack, plugins, and any custom code you'd inherit.
- 17. Hosting, email, and whether the domain registrar allows a clean push.
Legal & transfer (18–21)
- 18. Trademark conflicts on the brand/domain.
- 19. Outstanding contracts (writers, ad reps, sponsorships).
- 20. Reason for selling — pressure-test the story.
- 21. A written asset list + escrow covering domain, content, accounts, and list.
How to actually run it
Do it live: a recorded screen-share where the seller logs into each account beats any export. Ask for read access to Analytics and Search Console for a few days so you can watch real numbers, not a snapshot. Anything the seller won't show live is a red flag.
Close only through escrow
When the 21 points check out, structure the close so assets and money move together — never one before the other. That's what escrow is for, and why buying without a broker is safe when you follow the process.
// FAQ
What is the most important thing to verify when buying a website?
Live revenue and traffic access. Log into the real ad, affiliate, and analytics accounts via screen-share — screenshots and exported PDFs are trivially faked and prove nothing on their own.
How long should website due diligence take?
Plan on one to two weeks. You want enough days of live Analytics and Search Console access to confirm the numbers are stable and real, plus time to verify content ownership and the backlink profile.