You’ll have to wait for the re-registration grace period to end before you can purchase an expired domain. That can be as short as a few weeks or as long as a year, depending on the registrar’s re-registration policy.
If you plan to launch your business on the internet or migrate your current one to a new domain, you could be considering acquiring an expired one. If you find something that matches your business or preferred PBN domains, this second site can greatly benefit you.
Nonetheless, before you proceed with purchasing an expired domain, there are several aspects of obtaining a domain name you will need to familiarize yourself with.
What Is an Expired Domain?
An expired domain is one that was previously associated with an IP address but no longer is–it is an element closely related to WHOIS privacy for PBN domains. That said, the internet hosts sites as IP addresses and not domain names. Every web server needs a Domain Name System (DNS) to translate such names into IP addresses.
If you search for any expired domain name, a DNS will not be able to make the connection to the associated IP address, meaning that it won’t go anywhere. The good thing is that once a domain name expires, it is not necessarily out of the game forever–you can use an expired domain name for your IP address and create a new site.
Before you can understand how to buy an expired domain, it would be best to begin with some background information in order to look at the key players in the domain ownership business. Some of the details you will need to know to include:
- The registry is the organization’s name responsible for keeping the record of domain names when it comes to top-level domains (TLDs) like ‘.org’ or ‘.com.’
- The registrar is the body or platform authorized to register domain names.
- A reseller is a person of a company or institution that sells domain names on behalf of a registrar.
- A registrant is the individual of a company or institution that purchases and owns a particular domain. However, it is important to note that technically, no domain name is owned–domain names are leased.
When Can I Buy an Expired Domain?
Once a domain has been registered, it is ‘leased’ for a limited time, usually between one and ten years. Typically, a person or business will set up their business domains to auto-renew with their reseller to avoid worrying about renewals.
In case a domain is not renewed, another individual can lease it. However, you should keep in mind that buying an expired domain name differs from purchasing a brand name or registering one based on your domain ideas. That said, there are several means by which you can buy an expired domain name based on its nature, which includes:
- If the expiry date is one to thirty days in the past, it will still be within the ‘grace’ or ‘redemption’ period. This means that the owner may recover it for a greater fee than if they had initially renewed the domain on time.
- When a previous registrant does not renew their domain after thirty days, they forfeit ownership of it. Any person who registered an interest in purchasing the name will be made aware when that domain comes up for sale and be offered the chance to purchase it.
- Suppose no backorders are placed on your preferred domain, or the individual who placed the backorder no longer has an interest in acquiring the domain. In this case, the domain is usually auctioned off to the highest bidder, a process that can last up to seven days.
- A deleted domain refers to one that has been dropped from the registry–therefore, no record of it exists. This means that as long as you move quickly, a deleted name can be registered exactly as any other unregistered domain name.
In Summary
Just because you can purchase an expired domain does not necessarily mean you should; it also does not mean that the domain is squeaky clean. In some cases, the past issues of an expired domain can damage your search engine ranking, so it’s important to be extremely careful and aware when deciding to purchase an expired domain.