Private Domain Purchase

Protection for both parties

[shady]

I wonder if someone can help me! I wish to purchase a domain name from someone who I don't know. Is there a standard practice that you guys use to protect both sides of the deal: me from losing my money and him from not receiving payment!

Also, the domain in question is listed in google and dmoz and is a .com. Is there any problem with transfering ownership with regard to these listings?

Thanks for any help

[tedster]

A disinterested third party go-between is a great idea if there's any kind of "real" money involved. Many people praise escrow.com for this kind of service.

If the domain stays online and is not drastically re-purposed so as to need a different category, DMOZ and other directories should be no problem. However, if it goes "under construction" for a while, you could lose the listing.

Search engines index individual urls, not domains. If you take down the old urls then things could get crazy for a while. If you take the site as it is and expand on exisitng urls (perhaps phasing them out over time), you could have a very smooth search engine transition.

[shady]

Thanks very much for the good advice Tedster.
Luckily the domain is perfect for my purpose and as such listed in the correct category.

He has kindly changed the nameservers further to our verbal deal so I hope all will be well!

Thanks again.

Best regards
Shady

[shady]

One thing that concerns me a little is that the website appears to have been offline for about 1 year, however it has retained its listings in dmoz. I guess this is because the category has no editor.

Under the circumstances, I am considering leaving the registration unchanged and just changing the nameserver entries.

Does it make sense for me to do this or may I just as well change the registration to me?

Thanks
Shady

[gpmgroup]

Whosever details are in the WHOIS for the registered owner IS the owner no if's or but's.