desperate help with domain and Google

don't know if it's the right place to ask

[bluecorr]

Help!

I've had a domain for two years www.name1name2.com and recently the company who registered it last year took ages in releasing it so I couldn't re-register it. As a consequence I registered a new domain www.name1-name2.com. The site had quite some visitors and many of them still know the old address. There are some inbound links on the web to it.

The old address was inaccessible since its expiration in late October until a few days ago, I suspect, when I tried it and then asked google to remove it. Google gave me a denied access so I checked it out and to my amazement.... the old domain now belongs to a porn site! I am in shock, how could this happen so quickly considering how long it took for the company to release the domain? It's only a matter of days since I last checked. The old domain had a PR4 and of course it's indexed in Google with the old title, description etc.

What am I going to do with the promotion? it's easy to leave the "-" and end up at the old domain which is a porn site and this will send away my visitors for good.

Help, I'm desperate, where can I report this? or what can I do?

If you need the name of the company that registered it or the domain address stickymail me, please.

[Shakil]

bluecorr,

sorry to hear about your problem, but this is becoming increasingly common.

There are vultures/business@ waiting for your name to expire, and they will register it for all sorts of purposes.

hard work trying to take these people to court, sorry :(

Shak

[bluecorr]

should I just change the www.name1-name2.com to another domain?

[jdMorgan]

bluecorr,

Probably a good idea, and make sure you contact ODP and any other directories your old domain was listed in, and advise them of the situation...

Jim

[bluecorr]

what's the misspellings rate these days? what percentage could mistype the address and end up there? It's difficult to change the domain, the site has an established identity :(

[pageoneresults]

It's difficult to change the domain, the site has an established identity.

Not any more it doesn't. This is a tough situation to be in. Do you want to take the chance that your visitors are going to type the domain without the hyphen and end up at the site now occupying that space? I sure would not want to be in that type of situation.

I'd go for a new domain, new identity, and make sure that you cover yourself when purchasing the new domain(s), you don't want to end up in this same situation again. Send a broadcast email or post a notice on your home page that the site is going to be changing. Just prepare your existing users for the move and give them plenty of time to bookmark the new address.

I'd probably recommend a 301 redirect for the hyphenated domain to the new domain that you choose.

[AAnnAArchy]

Have you written to the new owner of the domain? Maybe that particular domain hasn't been that successful for them and they'd be willing to sell it to you.

AAnn

[John_Caius]

What about if it's the other way round, i.e. you have www.commonphrase.com and someone else registers www.common-phrase.com? Should you be bothered then? With one of our sites we have come across this situation but our site has a much higher profile and is picked up for plenty of different keywords so it's not a problem at the moment. If you've got lots of money to spend then it's easier to buy www.commonphrase.com, www.common-phrase.com, www.commonphrase.org, www.common-phrase.org etc. but the number of possible combinations is very large - in our case it just wasn't feasible so we went for just the non-hyphenated .com version.

[bluecorr]

The domain was registered by them on the 6th of December so it's very recent. I'm not made of money and this site is simply a fansite so my options are very limited. I'll consider buying a new domain name.

However my question is, can I use the fact that the company I had the domain name with took 6 weeks in actually releasing it after its expiration? I would have had priority in registring it, wouldn't I? It seems strange that they held onto it for so long and then out of the blue it was registered by someone else. Is this normal for a company that does domain registrations?

Thanks for the help

[Beachboy]

I have an idea. The porn people bought the domain for the traffic and maybe also the existing PR. Drop them a nice note that says something like this:

"I used to own this domain and planned to re-register it. I want to purchase it from you. This domain will not be of much further use to you since I am going to have the Dmoz and Yahoo links taken down, and I am right now in the process of notifying everyone who links to that domain to pull their links. Its traffic will dry up and the Google PageRank will fall to nothing. This domain will not be of any further value to you within a matter of a few weeks. I will give you $100 for it right now. It won't be worth $10 in a month. Interested?"

Good luck.

[AAnnAArchy]

Beachboy,

I dunno, if someone wrote that to me, I'd keep the domain out of spite. Whoever is buying up domains like that has some money, so $100 would mean nothing to them. I think a pleading, "Gosh, I've been waiting for that domain for months, but somehow you got it. If you're not making any good sales with it, could I buy it from you? I don't have much money because I'm just running a fansite, but I could offer you $50 for it." :)

AAnn

[Beachboy]

Oh I believe the recipient would get the message and know a deal when he/she sees it. ;)

[Yidaki]

Beachboy, quite cool suggestion! I think it could work especially with these pr only freaky pron people ... :) If the domain name has really no further value (if it's not a combi of a popular phrase of keywords or a well known brand) they sure think about the "special deal" of 100$.

<added>BTW is there really no way to file a law suite?</added>

[AAnnAArchy]

Beachboy

Oh I believe the recipient would get the message and know a deal when he/she sees it.

Sure, getting $100 for a worthless domain would be a deal for most people, but I would guess $100 would mean pretty much nothing to the person who bought the domain. If it was me and someone threatened me with getting links removed, I'd just sit on the domain. It probably cost them $5, so if it drops out of Google, they have a thousand other domains to replace it. I wouldn't think an ultimatum would work. I don't much like ultimatums. :) Of course, I don't own the domain in question, so I suppose it's a moot point.

AAnn

[Yidaki]

AAnnAArchy,

>If it was me and someone threatened me with getting
>links removed, I'd just sit on the domain.

Beachboy's suggestion is based on the fact that the domain in question has been *stolen* or reregistered by pron webmasters. If you would - in such a case - better like to sit on your *stolen* domain, i would search for you, find you and slap the hell out of you! ;)

[AAnnAArchy]

Yidaki

Beachboy's suggestion is based on the fact that the domain in question has been *stolen* or reregistered by pron webmasters. If you would - in such a case - better like to sit on your *stolen* domain, i would search for you, find you and slap the hell out of you!

It wasn't stolen, it was registered the second it became available. If bluecorr had the same software those people use to get domains, he might have ended up being able to buy the domain. If someone with that software wants a domain, those of us not using it really don't have a chance.

I'm not defending what the person did (I have adult sites, but they are adult oriented domain names with the "mature" indicator in Google), but if they got the domain the second it was available, it wasn't "stolen". As a matter of fact, they probably don't even have any idea that bluecorr wanted it, so threatening them wouldn't be my approach.

Bluecorr, keep us updated on what you decide to do...and what result you get.
AAnn

[Yidaki]

shhhh, ok, sorry ... let's not discuss about the difference between a *stolen* domain (notice the stars) and registering a expired domain that has still good listings at dmoz and other pages and that is found through a software looking for expired domains following the goal to grabb them and reregister them to profit from other people's work.

[bluecorr]

I'm afraid I can't afford to pay $100 to settle. It's not a matter of not wanting to, it's about not having it. The website is a fansite for a band, completely non-profit. I did announce the change of domain on the 3 major discussion boards where most people who visit my site come from. Still, I also reported them to google for the fact that when you click on the link you think is a fansite you end up at a porn site. Hope they'll remove the site at least until the next crawl/update.

There's not much I can do about the domain except build inbound links and get visitors through search engines. I already contacted everyone who linked to my site so....I'm pretty well covered for now. Considering what the refferals will be only a small percentage will probably mistype the domain name.... I hope, and in time get to the real address.

I have limited means so this is pretty much what I can do. What I find dubious though is why the company locked the domain for so long because I tried to register it soon after it expired and couldn't.

Thanks for the help guys :)

PS: I'm a "she" :)

[bluecorr]

Thanks to the kind intervention of a WW member I got in touch with the owner of the domain. They only rent out domains with good Google rankings and popularity but which the previous owners no longer need. So the owner was kind enough to transfer the domain back to me at no charge.

It's nice to see that taking the nice way can solve things easier and quicker than the hard way and that there are still good people out there. Thanks so much to the WW member who helped me and to the current owner of the domain and to all of your for your support :)

[bluecorr]

One more thing, is it Google-safe to use a redirect from www.name1name2.com to www.name1-name2.com? Since none of site pages on the old domain exist I only need the old domain pointing to the new one without Google banning me for cloaking.

[Marcia]

blucorr, use a 301 redirect for it, or look up mod_rewrite up in the site search (top of page) and do it that way. 301 is a bit easier. You do it in .htaccess - there were some recent threads on that with step by step explanations.