Can An Expired Domain Name Be Bought
How To Prevent Your Domain Name From Expiring
The food in your fridge isnt the only thing you need to worry about expiring.
Thats right, lets talk about an expiration that could be truly detrimental to your business, should the date pass you byyour business domain name, also known as a URL.
Your business domain name is time sensitive, depending on the plan you opted into upon purchase.
As a critical piece to the puzzle of your business brand, your domain name is something that you must keep track offrom registration information, to account log-in, and of course main point of contact.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you know when your domain name is due for renewal?
- Do you know where your domain name was purchased through, or is registered at?
- Do you have the account information on hand that is necessary to initiate the renewal?
- Do you know who the main contact within your organization has served as the main point of contact between your business and the domain registrar?
If the answer is no to any combination of the previous questions, were here to help.
Through this blog post, our hope is to help educate businesses about the inevitable domain expiration, so that you may be prepared with all that is necessary to renew and keep your business website on the world wide web.
Lets get down to business.
What Does This All Mean
- You’ll have 30 days after your registration expires to renew your domain at the standard rate.
- After 30 days*, it’ll still be possible to renew, but you’ll have to pay an additional fee — typically $100 . The amount of the restoration fee is determined by the registry and varies for each domain ending. See the Domain ending reference article for your domain to learn the amount of the restoration fee.
- After 60 days*, there’s no longer any way to renew. In that case, you’ll lose your domain.
Set your account to auto-renew so you dont have to manually renew your account, pay extra fees, or lose your domain.
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After The Registry Grace Period
If you do not renew the domain name during the registry grace period, it will be placed on a pending status to be deleted. If the original owner or the registrar doesnt buy the domain, it will be deleted and released for general registration.
While its devastating to lose your domain name, the good news is your registrar provides several renewal notices and opportunities for you to buy back your domain.
Lets take a quick look at the reasons why your domain name may expire and how you can make sure you dont lose your domain name.
Can I Put Up An Expiring Domain For Auction
Yes, if you are the owner of an expiring domain, you can place your site for auction on domain auction sites like Domain Sherpa or GoDaddy Auctions. By putting your domain name on auction, prospective buyers can look at your website and evaluate it based on their business or personal needs. Follow the domain auction companys instructions on how to process the transfer if a buyer decides to purchase your domain.
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Who Actually Owns A Domain Name
No one. Its all very tricky. Just as you registering the name is basically leasing it from the domain company, so the domain company leases it, i.e. pays for the right to lease it from ICANN. But it doesnt stop there the domain name company also has to pay a fee for the different domain extensions that they use. So for instance, the Donuts startup has been given the rights to administer the .rocks top-level domain by ICANN. Each TLD is given to a certain registry operator, and then a domain company also has to pay a fee for the TLDs they want to offer to their clients.
So, you pay your registrar to lease the domain name for a period of up to 10 years. The registrar, in turn, pays charges to ICANN and to registry operators that work with specific TLDs. In the end no one actually owns a domain name.
You cant. Was that too upfront? Its the truth, though domain names are just not designed to work that way. While big and small businesses have been trying to permanently own their domain names for decades, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has made it impossible for anyone to own a domain name for life.
What Happens When Your Domain Expires
Jeffrey is the Co-Founder of Saw.com, focusing on domain sales and acquisitions. Visit www.Saw.com if you want to purchase a domain.
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Oops! You accidentally let the domain you own expire. What happens next? First off, don’t panic. You still have a while before it is gone.
Most extensions follow the same common process, but some of it is based on which registry manages the extension of the domain, which registrar the domain is registered with and how long ago it expired. In this article, I will be covering the process of a .com domain. For example, certain extensions, such as ccTLDs and gTLDs , can have special rules regarding renewals.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers adopted the Expired Registration Recovery Policy on Aug. 31, 2013. The policy requires registrars to notify registrants of important information regarding expiration notices, redemption procedures and fees. This information is easily found on your registrar’s website.
Like many other regulations, it is up to the interpretation of the servicer. That means the registrar is obligated to follow the guidelines that ICANN has provided, but they all have their own way of handling renewals. Like the varying laws from state to state, they all generally follow a standard timeline for issuing notifications to registrants. See below for an example.
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How To Value Expired Domains
Ultimately when buying expired domains, I am doing so to get a head start with SEO.
In fact it gives you such a head start, that at this point there is no reason to build sites on new domains anymore unless its a branding play.
With that said:
95% of an expired domains value comes from its backlink profile.
Essentially the question you want to ask when valuing any domain name is:
How much would it cost to replicate this backlink profile?
And not just how much would it cost financially, but also how long would it take you to build a similar backlink profile.
Reputable link building services are charging-
- $170 each for high quality niche relevant links
- $2,000-$5,000 each for editorial links from sites like the BBC & New York Times
So that makes it very easy to appraise the backlink profile of an expired domain and figure out its true value from an SEO standpoint.
Click here to learn how to check domain ownership history.
What Is The Difference Between The Auto
The Auto-Renew Grace Period is a 45-day duration after the domain names expiration where the domain name holder or registrant may still renew the domain. During this period, the domain may still be in the zone file and may still work. The domain renewal fee will correspond to the hosts pricing plans.
The Redemption Grace Period is another 30-day duration where the domain name is no longer in the zone file, and the website and email associated with it will no longer work. During this period, the domain holder or registrant can redeem the domain and will also need to pay a redemption fee on top of your domain hosting plan fees. This fee will vary depending on your registrar.
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Who Is My Domain Registrar
Unsure as to who your domain registrar is, who exactly you purchased your domain name through?
Is it GoDaddy? Network Solutions? Or something else you just cant remember?
Dont stressa helpful solution is to run a WHOIS search.
WHOIS searches will allow you to input your domain name and then view specific information regarding your domain such as who your registrar is, who the main contact who created the account was, and even what servers your website is hosted on.
Do note: if you implemented privacy settings upon registration with your domain you may not be able to see all information, but you will see registrar informationwhich is the most valuable, should you happen to not recall where your domain was purchased.
When making your initial domain purchase, youll always want to do your research to confirm that you are buying from a reputable, trustworthy, authorized registrar.
Most domains fall within the same general price range, but as they sayyou get what you pay for.
Many domain registrars have spectacular customer service and are happy to help should you ever need help in the future .
As with any investment, you want to make sure that you will be well taken care of should a situation which needs a higher level of service arise.
Building An Authority Site On That Domain
I have personally done this in the past. We bought an education niche domain and added around 100+ articles on that blog.
That domain was getting backlinks from some high authority education websites, so we didn’t put any extra efforts to make backlinks for that domain.
We were surprised to see the ranking of our domain name.
Every article we used to write in that blog was ranking in Google.
Although it worked for just a few months, but we made a handsome income with the domain name.
So you can build a site around that expired domain and get the ranking from the past authority of that domain.
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From Days 1 To 30* After Expiration:
- Renewal grace period: Your domain name will be placed on hold, meaning that viewers will no longer be able to get to your website.
- Within 5 days after your registration expires, we’ll send an additional expiration notice via email to the registered name holder . This email will include instructions for renewing your registration.
- There is no additional fee to renew during this time period. Renewals will be charged at the standard rate. See the list of supported TLDs and prices to determine the standard rate for renewing your domain.
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As you can see above, the DomainSherpa.com domain name is due to expire on March 14, 2020, if not renewed prior to that date.
If the domain name is renewed prior to the expiration date, or within 30 days thereafter , an additional 1+ years is added to the domain name registration. In this case, continue to monitor the domain name using either a free DomainTools.com account or DomainHole.com account.
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When Does A Domain Expire
So if youre wondering, When does a domain expire? the answer is always different. Domain expiration is totally dependent on when you first registered the domain and the term length you set. For example, if I registered CoolDomain.com on Oct. 24, 2013, and purchased a domain registration length of five years, then the domain would expire on Oct. 24, 2018.
When a domain expires, you have one of two options:
If youre doing business online and are not in the midst of a rebranding, then holding onto your domain name is a high priority. The last thing you want to do is lose your business name to someone else after a missed renewal.
Expired Domains And Failed Payments
If we can’t charge the credit card on file for your site, your domain will remain active for 15 days past the renewal date. We’ll make additional attempts to charge your card every five days after the initially failed charge. After the third attempt, 15 days after the payment was due, the domain will officially expire and will no longer connect to your site.
After your domain expires, you’ll have a 30 day grace period to renew your domain through Squarespace. To renew an expired domain, ensure that your site is active and has a valid credit card linked, then reactivate your domain in your Domains panel.
After 30 days , the domain will be released back to the registrar. How you reactivate the domain depends on the domain’s registrar:
- If your domain’s registrar is Squarespace Domains LLC, contact us and we’ll help you reactivate the domain.
- If your domain’s registrar is Tucows, you can use this form to request they renew your domain. If they can renew the domain, the renewal price is up to them, and you can connect it to your site as a third-party domain.
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What Is The Process From Domain Expiration Until It Is Registered Again
From the first day of expiration, a person who registered a domain is given up 45 days to renew his registration without any penalties.
After these 45 days, that person is given 30 days to redeem the domain name, but this time, penalties may be charged by the registrar to redeem this domain name.
After this redemption period, a domain name will be made available for registration in five days.
Note that ICANN prescribes this period.
But, some registrars have been circumventing this regulation, and with the sheer number of registrars all over the world, the ICANN can only do so much in policing these companies.
So it would do you good to set up your monitoring to check the availability of these domain names.