Usurped domains are used by spammers, squatters, malware, SEO, phishing or other fraudulent activity. Typically they are legitimate domains that expired and were hijacked.

For other types of usurpation see WP:USURP.

The following is a decision tree for each citation. It can be followed manually, or implemented algorithmically by bot.

• Does the source URL have an archive available? If yes..
  • Is it in a CS1|2 template (eg. {{cite web}})? If yes..
    • Add |url-status=usurped, |archive-url= and |archive-date=
  • Is it a square-bracketed or bare URL? If yes..
    • Wrap the URL (with or without square brackets) in {{usurped}}

• Is no archive available? If yes..
  • Can the citation be verified if the URL was removed (eg. newspaper or journal content off-line)?
    • Remove the URL and keep the citation
  • Is the citation unverifiable without a URL (eg. web-only content)?
    • Remove the entire citation per WP:V: unverifiable

Bots that can usurpify automatically with the above steps:

• WP:WAYBACKMEDIC - report usurped domains to WP:URLREQ

• WP:JUDI - ongoing mass usurpation of expired domains across all Wikimedia projects