Grabbing Expired Domains
-
How hard is it to grab expired domains? I have my eye on a domain that is expiring in 3 days, but I don't think it's quite that simple. Doesn't it go through months of waiting to become available?
Is there an easy way to grab domains that are set to expire? Are the services that offer this type of service good? And who do you guys recommend?
-
I buy most of my expired domains through GoDaddy Auctions. Once you win an auction, it typically takes 4-5 days before the domain name is transferred to your account.
Also, I use www.registercompass.com to evaluate expired domain names.
-
The ease of grabbing an expired domain depends on many things.
If nobody else wants it, then it is easy.
The first time I did one, several years ago, I failed.
You pay the money and it gets you a backorder credit, that lasts for a whole year. If you fail, you try another one, because you don't lose the credit until one of two things happens - you get a domain or your credit expires.
On my third try, I did get a domain.
I also tried another method before using backorder - I wrote to the existing owner, - he didn't even know it had expired. He wanted $1500 for it, and I said it was too much for me. He renewed it. He still has it, and has never done anything with it. That was a bad move on my part, because its not likely anyone else was interested in it. That is what made me try the backorder method for other domains.
Godaddy backorder is now $20.99 - I do them for $18.95
It is about $8.99 for private backorder.
In my system, I think you can also request a refund if you fail to get the domain you wanted and you don't want any others. Godaddy is probably the same.
-
I think it goes that after the initial expiry date there's a two week 'grace' period where the original owner can renew, and then another period. This article explains it all, though it's from 2005:
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain
I've never actually sniped an expired domain but to be frank I haven't tried that often either. The impression I get is if a domain is actually valuable there's an army of domain squatters/speculators out there who can snag them way better than I.
-
I have never done a backorder, but I agree with kjay. You can go to GoDaddy and pay for the backorder service. However, I think it's $20.
Maybe you should find where it is registered and ask them.
-
It depends, if it's a .com you are going to be waiting a month at least probably 2, same for a .co.uk
You can use godaddy to back register domains then as soon as the domain is available it will register it for you, I think it costs around $10 per domain.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I be concerned about Google indexing an old domain if the listings redirect to the new domain?
I noticed this about Moz's old domain SEOMoz.org. If the URLs from the old domain are redirecting, is there any reason to be concerned about an old domain still appearing to be indexed by Google? See here: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site%3Aseomoz.org Links to seomoz.org are listed, but if you click them they redirect to moz.com. Is this anything to be concerned about or is everything operating as expected?
Technical SEO | | 352inc0 -
Block Domain in robots.txt
Hi. We had some URLs that were indexed in Google from a www1-subdomain. We have now disabled the URLs (returning a 404 - for other reasons we cannot do a redirect from www1 to www) and blocked via robots.txt. But the amount of indexed pages keeps increasing (for 2 weeks now). Unfortunately, I cannot install Webmaster Tools for this subdomain to tell Google to back off... Any ideas why this could be and whether it's normal? I can send you more domain infos by personal message if you want to have a look at it.
Technical SEO | | zeepartner0 -
Should this site start again on a new domain
Hi We have not done SEO on this site they have used another company who looks like they outsourced and the links have been built by a third party all blog networks and this company have said they cannot get the links removed. Google flagged artificial links on this web site in February and in April it lost over 10000 visitors in a month and its just free falled ever since. The categories have been recreated and no redirects created due to the amount of backlinks from the blog sites to the original category pages but the site is not recovering its down to 1500 visitors a month and used to get 14000 a month. So should my customer ditch the domain and move this site to fresh domain? http://www.kids-beds-online.com Any answers would really be appreciated. thanks Tracy
Technical SEO | | dashesndots0 -
Migrating a better performing domain to a less well performing domain
I have a customer who has many domain names and assets but she's wanting to consolidate some of them to help her simplify things for her customers but mostly she wants to build up her website through which she sells products. Grief Reflection - www.griefreflection.com is a personal journal that she's keeping to process the impending death of her husband and it's also linked to her business website which sells healing from grief types of products. Storybooks for Healing - www.storybooksforhealing.com is the website through which she sells workbooks and memory books for people who want to keep the memory of their loved one alive after they've gone. I've setup both of these domains as campaigns and have been looking at the metrics for both. The grief reflection blog out performs the storybooks for healing website. If we merge the two then the Grief Reflection blog would likely become a subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com and be more fully integrated which she thinks will help her visitors not get confused while navigating her website. www.griefreflection.com has 12,637 links while www.storybooksforhealing.com has 1,462. Also, Google has indexed 380 pages of Grief Reflection and only 100 pages for Storybooks for Healing, though that may be because there are fewer pages to index. Grief reflection also has a 4.36 mozRank and 5.30 mozTrust, where Storybooks has 4.13 mozRank and 5.15 mozTrust. Should I counsel her to keep these domains separate? If not, would simply setting up 301 redirects from the www.griefreflection.com domain name to the new subdirectory under www.storybooksforhealing.com be the way to go? Thank you ever so much for any wisdom anyone can provide.
Technical SEO | | ChristiMc0 -
Can I do a redirect to a new domain name only a couple of weeks after having redirected to another domain?
I have a client with two website with very similar content. Both had a lot of inbound links and performed fairly well in SERPS. We recently combined both sites and have redirected one of the domains to the other. The traffic dipped slightly initially, but is recovering nicely. Now the client registered a new domain name he would like to use for the site. Should I wait a few weeks for everything to settle down after the first redirect/consolidation of sites before doing a new redirect to a new domain name, or should I not worry about having any issues with doing it right away?
Technical SEO | | Drewco0 -
Changing preferred domain
My company has an international website, and because of a technical issue visitors in one of our main countries cannot visits the "www" version of our site. Currently, the www version is our preferred domain - and the non www redirects to that page. To solve this problem, I was thinking of proposing the following and would greatly appreciate any feedback! (Note: If you answered my www vs. non www question, thanks - this is a follow up) 1. Set non www site as the preferred version 2. Redirect from www to non www 3. Contact our current links and ask them to change to without “www” 4. Change canonical URLs to without “www”
Technical SEO | | theLotter0 -
Sub Domains
Hi,,, Okay we have 1 main site , a few years back we went down the road of sub domains and generated about 10. They have page rank and age but we wish to move them back to the main web site. What is the correct or best way to achieve this. 1 copy all content to the main web site creating dup pages and then use a redirects from the sub pages to the new dup pages on the main domain... or 2 write new content on the main domain for the subdomain pages and redirect to the new content. Problem with 2 is the amount of work involved...
Technical SEO | | NotThatFast0 -
Max number of results from domain on a SERP
I have read in many places that the maximum number of results that will be displayed on the SERP from a domain or subdomain is 2. Is this still the case? I have seen many instances where there are well more than 2 results from a domain displaying on the SERP. For example, search 'cvs pharmacy' on Google. There are 7 results from the cvs.com domain. Is it the case that the search engines will display more if it's a branded search?
Technical SEO | | ryanwats0