Domains: is there life after death?

Everyone who has a domain has a chance to lose their domain. This is if to rephrase the song "If you do not have a dog ...". In the same article, we will see the most vivid examples of domain loss and make sure that even the scale of the company does not save from such banal problems. In addition, consider the procedure for recycling a domain, if it has not been extended. How long will he be waiting for you and how quickly someone else can buy it? And how to escape from this? About this below.

How Microsoft lost hotmail.co.uk

One of the most striking examples of the loss of domains due to collective irresponsibility occurred in the already distant 2003 year. The agitated public in the face of individual well-wishers tried to somehow clarify and remedy the situation, while Microsoft behaved with bureaucratic slowness stereotyped for large companies. Firstly, all reminders about the need to extend the domain were ignored, as a result of which the domain was put up for sale, and the postal service stopped working in the UK. The domain was immediately bought by a sympathetic person, who immediately wrote and then called the company asking to re-register the domain and restore the service. And here begins the second: all these letters and calls were simply ignored. Only after a while they realized the problem (not without the participation of journalists) and themselves contacted this person. Thirdly, even after that nothing happened for quite a long time as for such cases of time. There is an assumption that the British office of Microsoft simply had no leverage to influence the situation, since domains could only be registered from the central office. In the end, they, of course, restored everything. But - the cherry on the cake - there was no official statement from Microsoft about what happened. It was possible to shed light only by addressing the registrar of domain names. He confirmed that the domain was not really renewed on time, was bought by a private person, and all reminders were sent on time according to the procedure - but, obviously, they were lost in corporate mail.
It should be noted that this is not the only such case in the practice of Microsoft. Earlier similar happened in 1999

What happens to a domain if it is not renewed?

The procedure depends on the domain name registrar. In addition, it has changed repeatedly over time. Next, we consider the most typical procedure that is relevant today.
The first stage - the registrar shows loyalty to the client and gives a little more time for renewal. It can be from one to 2-3 weeks. This period may also have several deadlines in itself - for example, a free update period, followed by some kind of fine, and so on. But the point is that during this period, no one has a chance to "pick up what lies badly."
The second stage is the auction. After the registrar concludes that the domain is not fully renewed - it puts it up for auction. This is a way for the registrar to earn extra money - not to put the domain right away for re-registration to the first person who wants to, but try to earn more. And, I must say, the method works - many domains are actually bought at auction. It should be noted that at the moment there are several of the most popular auctions:

1. Go daddy auctions
2. Namejet
3. SnapNames.com

Each registrar cooperates with one of them. Domain can not be simultaneously put up for multiple auctions. How does the auction work? To begin with, it is often possible to put on a domain long before it expires. This is if someone is very interested in your domain. In this case, he will receive a notification that your domain will end soon, and he will most likely not miss this moment. Well, then as in the usual auction - who will give more, that and the prize. The auction can also be divided into several stages - for example, after the auction, the sale of the illiquid or any other action can start.
In addition, there are such sites that collect information and provide it in a more convenient way. From the interesting here - you can see that more than 3 million domains expired in the last 10 days. Or that, for example, even expensive (costing up to $ 500K) domains can also end up in a landfill over time.

The third stage is the "death" of the domain. It ceases to exist and it can be registered again on a general basis. Only if the domain consists of clear words and has already been at least somehow promoted - there is no hope for that. Almost certainly it will be bought back earlier, since this is also the basis for building a business.
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More examples

In 2010, the well-known site Foursquare did the same trick. Just forgot to pay for the domain. However, they were lucky - they managed to extend it, and everything was limited to the inconvenience of customers who wanted to use the site at this time. And also a wave of publications on thematic resources, which, however, is more likely even a plus.

There are sad examples. In 2012, the industry leader, the Indian tourist website Yatra.com, with millions of visitors and a tidy sum of turnover, lost its domain. It all ended with an outflow of customers, loss of partners, reputation, money. The domain has been restored and the site is still working, but has not yet come to the previous figures.

No need to go far - one of the most popular news sites in Ukraine, Liga.net, in 2015 also did not extend the domain on time. The recovery took 3 days, during which they published their news on the pages in social networks.

Bankers (for example, imagine what their reputation was for - the bank’s website and online banking is unavailable during the week), and many other large companies, not to mention small studios and personal websites. Even we almost hit:

Website monitoring almost lost the domain

The reason for writing this publication was a head-on collision with a problem. The irony of fate is that the domain of the monitoring service host-tracker.com almost disappeared, despite the fact that the service has the function of determining and notifying about the expiration of the domain. Actually, this saved us - our domains and sites, of course, are monitored by our own system. The domain name registrar sent out a reminder of the expiration, but the responsible officer made sure that auto-renewal was turned on - and was calm. However, for some reason the automatic payment was not debited from the card, and the domain did not last. Why - support could not clearly explain. Fortunately, our monitoring service noticed this and managed to solve the problem quickly, on the last day.
As a result of the situation, I want to make a few comments:

• A good idea - to extend the domain in advance. It would also be nice if the registrar tried to conduct an automatic renewal some time before expiration, and in case of failure would write about it. Why GoDaddy is not doing this so far is not clear.
• Another reminder was a letter in which someone expressed a desire to purchase our domain, just a few hours before its expiration. As you can see, "pre-order" in the auction still works. So consider flies in such situations is fraught.
• And yes, even after our expiration there would be a grace period for payment. But at this time a sad page would return to our customers: “the domain has expired”. Renewal, correspondence with support and other similar manipulations would take at least hours or even days. Therefore, it is better not to bring this up.
• You can control not only other people's domains, on which the eye is laid - but also your own, as in our case. There are a number of services, such as ours , with which you can monitor domains and avoid trouble. The function description can be found in the previous publication .