Closing Site

[WebSpinner]

A few weeks back I wrote to you all about a site widgets.com vs. oldwidgets.com.

Basically, unless we want to go to court to hash-out the finer details (MUCHO EXPENSIVE), I'm being forced to close widgets.com. The real rules are:

TM everything.
INC or LLC your company

Once someone starts the complain, initial letter asking you to stop, if they think they have a case, they can just take you to court and if you loose, you pay for EVERYTHING!! Does not matter that we were up and running the URL first, how long they were in business in BY FAR more important.

As the business will not be closed, we're going try and create a new site (DOMAIN) and see how fast we can get back up and running.

Here is what I have planned to do immediately:

Pointing widgets.com to the new site.
Working Google's AdWorks
Sign up with Position Tech. (MSN Users)
Yahoo? Should I do Overture or Spend the $299 a yr.

That's for immediate exposure, and from there I will spend time working my way into Google.

Can you folks suggest any other tips? This really sucks as widgets.com was very deep in the old and new se's.

TIA,
Spinner

[korkus2000]

Is it in reference to this thread?

[webmasterworld.com...]

did you get legal advice?

[korkus2000]

Before you throw away all of your hard work I suggest talking to score [score.org]. They can help you for free or a very minimal cost.

[Marcia]

Spinner, get the compendium of opinion on how to handle the change/move from some of the tech-savvy people here. You can 301 (permanent redirect) from the original domain to the new which will send visitors from search engine rankings that are slow to change, most of which don't count for too much anyway.

I can't offhand recall the Page Rank implications of a 301 right now; there was a recent thread. Yahoo will depend on how well your new domain will rank; ODP should be an easy change, your category has an active editor who is right on it; I had a site added without submitting that was found on one of my sites somehow when I submitted another site. That will count for a lot, and you do have some links that will be very quick to point to your new domain, so the new will have PR 5 easily in no time. You most likely will not even need AdWords, but it's good that it's there.

You might not even need to sign up with Ink paid - give it a little time to see.

You won't disappear that quickly, particularly with a 301 if you can do that. I would check into the possibility of REMOVING the old domain from Google's database at some point so the opponent can't capitalize on your previous efforts and will have to start from scratch. That would have to be properly timed, figuring on spidering schedules. No doubt it's your rankings they're after; I would not let them have that.