Expired Domain Names

What happens when a domain expires? Knowing the answer will be important when a valuable webhosting customer says to you, "I just realized my domain expired a month ago!"

by Scott Clark Executive Editor, Web Developer Channel, internet.com [May 25, 2001]
Scott Clark is the Executive Editor of internet.com's Web Developer Channel. Previously, he was Managing Editor of WDVL.com and JavaBoutique.com, as well as Technical Editor for Web Developer magazine and later, WebDeveloper.com. He has been part of the Dr. Website team for the last 5 years, and continues to love discovering and using new Internet technologies.

It's probably happened to you countless times. You get a call from a frantic customer who tells you, "I just realized that my domain name expired a month ago!" So you go and check, and, sure enough, their domain did expire over a month ago. Amazingly, it's still listed in the whois database as being registered, even though it has legitimately expired. Another domain that you meant to renew expired last week, and it's already gone from the whois database—meaning anyone can register the domain.

What exactly happens when a domain expires and why do some names get taken out of the database immediately while others remain there for months, even years?

Back in the "good ole days" of the Internet, when someone registered a domain name, they only had one registrar they could go to—Network Solutions. After a few years of such a monopoly, there came to be many, many registrars, each with their own policies and pricing structures.

As the founder of internet.com's DomainNotes.com website, I became aware of these registrars as they appeared, and I eventually built a directory which listed the various features and services of each registrar.

It's not all NetSol
When someone registers a domain name today, it doesn't matter which registrar they go through...once the domain is registered, it is included in the central domain database that you access using any whois tool.

Essentially, each registrar's database is updated with info from other registrars, via Network Solutions' zone files, so folks don't look up a domain such as "Microsoft.com" using whois and see it come back as being "available" when it was actually registered by another registrar.

Although they share information from each others' domain databases, each registrar's policies concerning expired domains are different. One registrar may give the owner of a domain 15 days after the domain has expired to renew it, while others either don't provide any grace period, or they may allow the domain to stay in their database for months—even years—before they take the time to delete it.

Although some folks initially thought that Network Solutions (VeriSign) was holding on to expired domains in order to suppliment their own domain auction service, that is not the case.

The VeriSign spokesperson we spoke to stated that "The NSI Registrar provides a grace period of approximately 60 days for customers to renew their domain names. Like all businesses, including insurance companies, utilities and banks, it is a commercially reasonable practice for customers to have a certain amount of time after their contract period concludes to pay either their current bill or to renew services for a future period."

When asked why some domains may be deleted from the whois registry almost immediately while others remain in the database for months on end, the VeriSign spokesperson responded that "a number of circumstances may be involved, including, but not limited to: the grace period, a registration partial payment, billing disputes, credit card charge-backs, bounced check charge-backs, clerical mistakes, incorrect postings, bankruptcy, legal disputes."

They indicated that they no longer specify the exact date or time a domain will become expired due to "domain name speculators who would attempt to register expired domains by using robots or other automated methods of mass registration."

One thing's clear: it's not like the "good ole days" when you could see the date a domain went on "hold" by simply looking it up with whois, and then, like clockwork, the domain would be released two months after it went on hold.

Unclaimed domains
What about services that send subscribers a weekly list of recently dropped domain names? The service is popular because of the notion that previously registered domains are more likley to be more valuable.

For a while, Network Solutions wasn't releasing many dropped domains, and other registrars hadn't been in business long enough to have any dropped domains, so there weren't as many expired domains to choose from. Recently, however, Network Solutions began dropping the domains on a more regular basis, and other registrars have passed their intial registration period (as the minimum registration period is a year).

That means that many good names are being released each day. Another reason for an increased number of dropped domains is because the domain industry, much like other Internet businesses, took a big hit from the economy. Big money domains are not selling as often as they did in the past, and like the stock market, the domain industry had to be "adjusted" to reflect a more accurate valuation. This means that a lot of domain speculators are releasing their coveted domains instead of renewing them, so these domains are now available to be registered.

Since each registrar's expiration policies are different, you must approach the problem of expiring domains in several ways. You can:

• try to view your domains' whois records at least once a month to verify their accuracy, contact information, etc.
  
  
• make sure your domain contacts' email addresses are valid and working
  
  
• encourage your clients to register their domains for five or more years, so the maintenance fee won't come up each year
  
  
• use a reminder service to let you know when your domains are about to expire such as 101-Reminders

One last thing you can do is to register (or transfer) all of your domains to one registrar—preferably one with a publicly stated expiration policy as well as a domain management system which allows you to keep track of your domains and their expiration dates.

—End

Related articles:
	[May 25, 2001]	VeriSign Shuts Down TLD List
	[May 22, 2001]	Commerce Okays ICANN-Verisign Deal
	[Sep. 7, 2000]	Domain Name Hoarding?