Written on September 9th, 2006 at 09:09 pm by Darren Rowse
Lesson for the day – Renew Your Domain Name
Don’t let your domain names expire.
Easy to do – especially if you’re changing your email addresses around.
PS: I’ve been going with 10 year domain registrations recently to help with this – but also because a patent released by Google last year indicated that they look at length of domain registration when ranking a domain. I’m not sure what weight it has – but it all adds up (plus it means I only have to embarrassingly explain why I didn’t renew it every decade instead of every year or two)
15 Responses to “Lesson for the day – Renew Your Domain Name” - Add Yours
PXLated
September 9th, 2006 10:30 pm
The only trouble is you tend to forget when it’s due when you have a long term. I just did the five year Oooops. :-(
Martin
September 9th, 2006 10:46 pm
Ahem … thank you. I broke the story ;-)
Actually, I thought I was going crazy when all I got was the GoDaddy parked page at 9rules.
I thought: am I drunk? No, I wasn’t. Am I doing something wrong? I checked around and nobody seemed to be noticing. I finally realized: heck, they’ve simply forgot to renew their name.
So I wrote it up at The Blog Herald and all the usual suspects came rolling in. :-)
Yep, a 10 year registration I think is in order.
gdmike
September 9th, 2006 11:12 pm
I let a domain expire a couple of years ago. It was a personal site and not something I kept up with regularly, but by the time I realized it a week later it had been snatched up by a company called Domain Contender for resale. The problem was, they weren’t yet selling anything as they had not opened for business. Registrars like GoDaddy provide the option to watch a domain and alert you as soon as it becomes available.
So always keep in mind that if you do unintentionally let a domain expire, you run the risk of losing it for a long while or facing a higher rate from a company like Domain Contender.
Ming (click for rss article)
September 10th, 2006 12:56 am
Thanks for the lesson! Now we’ll have to think how serious we are about each domain name.
Paul Stamatiou
September 10th, 2006 3:05 am
Mine’s good until sometime past 2012, so I think I’m safe.
Mr SEO
September 10th, 2006 3:06 am
I though Google said they don’t look at how long a site is registered for and that it had no weight on rankings. Can you show me where this patent is?
Ian Anderson
September 10th, 2006 3:16 am
I check my domains once a month to see what needs to be renewed. If you make it a habbit of renewing a couple months in advance, you won’t have any problems.
Peter
September 10th, 2006 3:50 am
Just thought it should be mentioned, a lot of registrar have “Auto-Renew” now too. Just set your domains up on Auto-Renew, and make sure they have your most up to date credit card info, and you’re good to go. But, if you own only one or a handful of domains, certainly just register it for ten years, or more. I can’t see domain registration getting any cheaper than it is nowadays.
Ma2T
September 10th, 2006 6:09 am
I still normally go with 2 year regs. I would prefer more but don’t have the free cash right now. I remember reading about the length of domain adds up for more google points.
Phil
September 10th, 2006 8:38 am
My understanding of the domain registration weighting is that it’s related to the length of time that a domain has been established for rather than when it’s set to expire next; so if two domains have identical content and one was registered last week and the other 7 years ago, then the more established one will derive a benefit.
jhay
September 10th, 2006 9:32 am
Of course, domain renewals. Thanks for the reminder
Jeremy Steele
September 10th, 2006 10:37 am
Mine is set to auto-renew every year….. there problem solved. I only have to worry about having the $10 every year to pay for it…
Mr SEO
September 11th, 2006 12:33 am
I have to disagree that domain length has anything to do with SEO. I know I have heard Matt Cutts mention it holds no merit. Many people now block their information. What would Google do there, ban them? Demote them because of it? Reregistration for 10 years means nothing. You could sell your domain, transfer it and it could become a spam site. Age doesn’t guarantee a site is trustworthy.
Hendry Lee
September 12th, 2006 1:56 pm
I never miss a single domain renewal unless I purposely let the domain die. At the end of every month, I put it in my calendar as part of my monthly administrative tasks to login to Namecheap — the domain registrar I use — and check to see if any domain is about to expire.
This way, I don’t even have to pay attention the 30-day email notification that Namecheap send me prior to expiration.
Even the domain that expired 31 days after my login get renewed just ontime. This demonstrates the importance of a good registrar like Namecheap for the central of your whole domain registration — they provide autiorenewal too, and of course a good action management system — I use GTD.
David
March 28th, 2007 2:05 am
If only I had read this yesterday before my domain registration expired.
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