Losing Web site domain is bad for business

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Losing Web site domain is bad for business

Firms that give up domain name can find a new one with a different Net suffix.

Detroit News staff and wire reports

May 22, 2005 - If the Web is the front door to your small or home business, losing control of your Internet domain name can be catastrophic.

A domain name is the name of a Web site or the part of an e-mail address that comes after the @ sign.

Renewing ownership of a domain is usually easy and inexpensive, yet many companies forget to do it, said Cornel Ivanescu, owner of CI Web Design in Dearborn Heights, which builds Web sites and helps companies register domains.

That omission can lead to breakdowns of their Web sites and e-mail systems or, in some cases, to potential customers being rerouted to pornography.

"Now you can register a domain for 100 years if you'd like," Ivanescu said. "But most people keep on renewing for just one year at a time or two years at a time, and that's what gets them in trouble."

The more traffic a particular Web site gets, the more trouble letting a domain registration lapse can create.

Ivanescu had to help one client, Artistic European Granite and Marble in Inkster, change its Web address to aegminc.com after its registration of aegm.com expired. Another company snatched up the original site and wanted $50,000 to give it back.

In another case, Michigan Basset Rescue in Waterford Township changed its Web address several years ago, and porn purveyors got hold of the old site; visitors looking for the rescue service were greeted by lewd pictures.

"It's amazing how many businesses don't equate the domain name with the Web site name or their business name," says Aaron Larkins, president of Cincinnati Web site developer Profitability.net. "It's as much of a brand as anything else. And some people just let it slip away."

In some instances, losing control can be the result of a malicious act. Online auction site eBay briefly lost control of its German site www.eBay.de last September when hackers apparently got control of its domain name.

But most of the time, it's simply an oversight in sending in the paperwork.

The twist is that renewing such a registration costs as little as $6, and sites can be locked to prevent anyone else from gaining control if the renewal notice happens to "get lost in the mail." (Some companies may charge a little more for service fees.)

"Some of the biggest companies out there have forgotten to reregister their domain, including Hotmail," says James Woods, product manager of domain names for Tucows Inc., a Toronto company that specializes in Web infrastructure for Internet service providers, including getting domain names.

Woods says the two most common scenarios are when an employee in charge of renewing a domain name leaves the company and no one realizes that the function needs to happen, or when a partner in a business might take the domain and the appropriate user names and passwords with him or her when the business dissolves.

Larkins and Woods both say there are plenty of people waiting for such expirations, especially for domains of well-known Web sites.

The actual registration process is done through a firm authorized to do so by several different nonprofit corporations set up to manage the Internet.

One of the biggest is the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees registrations for .com and .net domains, among others. Spokesman Kieran Baker says several safeguards have been put into place in the past two years to help companies avoid losing control of their own sites, even giving firms grace periods.

http://www.detnews.com/2005/technology/0505/22/B07-188894.htm

Alternatives to .com

Several new Internet domain-address suffixes have been introduced recently but are not as popular as the old standbys .com, .net and .org.

• .biz: Designates a business-oriented Web site or e-mail address. It is managed by official registrar Neulevel Inc. at www.neulevel.biz/.

• .info: For sites specifically geared to providing new information about a product, destination or concept. It is managed by registry operator Afilias Limited at www.nic.info.

• .name: Geared to individuals wanting their own personal site using their name. The company selected to operate .name, Global Name Registry, has posted an informational page at www.nic.name.

• .museum: Sponsored by Museum Domain Management Association. MuseDoma's informational site can be located at www.nic.museum.

• .coop: For cooperatives, it is sponsored by the National Cooperative Business Association. An informational site is available at www.nic.coop.

• .aero: Centered on the aerospace industry and is sponsored by Societe Internationale de Telecommunications Aeronautiques SC. For more information on .aero, visit www.nic.aero.

• .travel: For the travel industry and only has recently been approved and is sponsored by the Travel Partnership Corp., www.ttpc.org.

• .jobs: For sites specializing in job search and classifieds and also has only recently been approved. It is sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management, www.shrm.org/dotjobsapp.asp.

Sources: Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers; www.InterNIC.com

DropListPro.com Launches Smart Search for Expired Domains

DropListPro.com, an expired domain search engine, has released a new and improved design and all new features, which include a search wizard, smart search, and many more.

(PRWEB) June 17, 2005 -- While there are more than 20,000 domains being registered each day, most people don't realize that there are also just as many expiring. After a domain expires it may be up to three months before it becomes available. www.DropListPro.com shows when these domains will be coming back on the market and how to acquire them.

To increase the speed of finding quality domains, a smart search has been contrived. When activated, the search engine will not only search for the keyword used, but also the most relevant related terms. For example, if the user searches for "loans," the search engine will return all domains containing loan, lend, debt, credit, borrow, or mortgage. The smart search also works for common industry specific words or acronyms like "seo," which will also return results containing searchengine, optimize, or pagerank. "I have to say that I find DropListPro.com, as it is currently, the best I have seen overall," says current customer Kelly Pitts.

The staff at DropListPro.com understands that everyone may not be as computer savvy as industry professionals. Taking that into consideration, a search wizard has been developed. The wizard is a step-by-step guide through the process of using DropListPro's search engine. As the user progresses through the wizard, the search filter is dynamically filled-out after each simple question.

''For average users, DropListPro.com simplifies process of finding expired domains,'' says sedo.com. Other features have been added as well, such as searching by exact drop date, excluding words from the results, and the ability to search by multiple keywords. This will facilitate the ability for average users and industry professionals to acquire a decent domain without the need of thousands of dollars.

A demo of an expired domain name search engine can be found at (http://www.droplistpro.com/demo.php). For additional information or to schedule an interview, contact Chris Richmond at (702) 281-1828 or via email at (http://www.droplistpro.com/contact.php).