Expired domain

01

Expired domain, explained

For a typical gTLD such as .com, the timeline is set by ICANN policy and registry rules. Registrars must send reminders about a month and a week before expiry and another within five days after. At expiry the registry renews the name automatically and gives the registrar up to 45 days of grace. Each registrar decides how much of that the owner gets; during it the owner can still renew, sometimes for a late fee, and the name usually points to a notice page. If the registrar deletes the name, a 30-day redemption period follows, in which only the previous owner can restore it, usually for an extra fee. Then come 5 days of pending delete, after which the name drops and anyone can register it.

Many valuable names never reach the drop. Registrars and their auction partners sell expiring names during the grace and redemption periods, and the winner gets the name only if the owner does not renew in time. Names that do drop go to drop-catching services, which compete to register them the moment they are released; when several customers backordered the same name, it usually goes to auction among them.

An expired name can carry history: backlinks, type-in traffic, and sometimes past spam use or a penalty. Check its archive history, backlinks and trademarks before you bid. A name sold in an expiry auction before it drops keeps its original creation date, while a dropped and re-registered name gets a new one. For UDRP purposes, though, the date that counts is when you acquired the name, so an old creation date does not protect a name that targets a newer mark.

AI tools can now score the long daily lists of expiring names quickly, so more bidders spot the same obvious candidates. The edge shifts from finding names to judging them: whether a real end-user buyer exists and whether the history is clean.

Go deeper Expired Domains and Drop Catching: How the Domain Lifecycle Works