One more: ask for an example of a post they published in the last month and check if it’s indexed. Lots of these sites have half their posts not indexed, so your link basically doesn’t exist for Google.
Check the Wayback history for at least the last 5 years, not just the latest snapshot. Half the domains I looked at last year had a stint as a casino or pharma site in the middle and the seller “forgot” to mention it.
Also check that the referring domains are still live. A lot of them are dead or deindexed, the number in Ahrefs looks nice but it’s mostly ghosts.
