In the past few months, I’ve been working with a few clients whose domain names have expired — that is, the period of time they registered the name for ran out. If your domain expires:
- Your Web site goes dark (or more likely, is replaced with a page full of ads). The HTML files might still be there, but the address pointing to those files now points elsewhere.
- Your email bounces. Since email is tied to the domain, if the name goes dark, so does the email.
- Usually, you have 30 to 45 days to reclaim your domain, just by paying the fees for another year (or more). After that, anyone else can grab your domain. There are squatters who will try to sell your domain back to you — for a lot more than you would have paid for it…), and they use automated software to find expiring domains. But sometimes others want your domain for their own use — for example, if they have a business with a similar name.
The best solution is foresight: set your domain settings to “auto-renew” and be sure the current credit card is saved in the system.
If you lose your domain (and someone else takes it), there are few options to get it back:
- Buy the domain back. Paying $60-1,000 or more to get back your own domain is a drag — but if you’ve invested in branding and marketing as well as search engine optimization in a domain, you’ll be paying more to reprint your business cards and marketing materials and redo all your SEO efforts with a new domain name.
- Contact the domain owner directly: WHOIS records often list a name, email, phone number and mailing address. Be professional: explain your situation and ask if there’s something you can do to get the domain back. This actually worked for one client (a nonprofit; we reimbursed expenses, and the guy was very nice). If nothing else, you might find out what you’re up against.
- There is a formal alternative, which is: try to wrest the domain back by asserting a trademark-based claim to the domain. All registrars follow the same policy, which is detailed here: http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm. Basically, it’s an arbitration procedure, in which you formally assert that you have trademark rights to the domain (and therefore have a claim to the .com version), and that the other person does not have those rights. You can learn more here: http://domains.adrforum.com/ . Note that as of January 2008, fees for this arbitration start at $1,300, and there are no guarantees…
For more on this, see Domain Ownership Woes, which also includes a little background on who “owns” your domain.
