# URL registration expiries **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 5, 2003, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-registration-expiries/173238 "2003-05-05T18:34:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Standup\_Karmic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ac91a4/32.png) [@Standup\_Karmic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Standup_Karmic)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-registration-expiries/173238/1 "2003-05-05T18:34:29Z")
You know, this probably isn’t the best forum for computer questions, but I frankly don’t know any other congregations of people whose answers and insights I trust as much as those here. So, now that I’ve buttered y’all up… I’m looking at a domain name that, according to ‘whois’ lookups, expired last week. The company that owned it appears to be defunct. I’d like to acquire it and redirect it to the website I’ll be putting up, as it is at the top of Google’s search under applicable keywords. Unfortunately, even though it appears to be expired, any site that I go to to try to register it tells me that it is unavailable. Is there a waiting period after expiry before it can be registered in order to give owners an opportunity to re-register it before an aggregator scoops it up? ---
**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-registration-expiries/173238/2 "2003-05-05T18:48:51Z")
A lot of registrars hold onto names after they expire. There’s definitely a grace period during which they’ll let the owner renew because I’ve had to deal with a couple of these. In most cases, even when the registration was expired we could renew normally, but I’ve never seen any formal documentation of how long this grace period is or whether it varies between registrars (but I haven’t bothered to look). There have also been accusations against some registrars who held expired domains so they could resell them rather than releasing them so they’d be available to other registrars. I have no idea whether that ever actually occurs. There is a service ([https://www.snapnames.com/](https://www.snapnames.com/)) which will monitor domain names and try to register them for you as soon as they become available. They charge a fee, but it may be worth it if you really want the name. Note that I haven’t used them and don’t endorse them, I’d just noticed that the NSI whois tool has a “backorder this domain” link that goes to this site when you do a whois on an existing domain. If the domain appears unused, you might contact the owner. I have both bought and sold domains in this way. I’m not a domain broker, but my company does have a few domain names that were registered for projects or clients that never used them. We tend to renew them just to hold them if we think they’re good names, but we’ll part with them pretty cheaply if someone else wants them. ---
**Author:** ![xash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/c6cbf5/32.png) [@xash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xash)\ **Post date:** [May 5, 2003, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/url-registration-expiries/173238/3 "2003-05-05T21:18:45Z")
I once was interested in purchasing a domain name that was listed as expired for 3 months already when I ran a whois on it. I then wrote to NetworkSolutions asking them what their policy on expired domain names was, and when was it likely to be released for re-purchase in the open market. They replied saying that they allowed a grace period for expired domain names to be renewed by their previously registered owners, and that from time to time they purged expired domain names from the registry, releasing them into the market. When I asked for time lines for either instances, they said there was a grace period of atleast 14 days and that the deletion process had no specific interval, it could occur anytime, and, I’m guessing, sometimes not for months, since the domain name I was interested in was listed as expired for about 3 months at the time. Wait, let me see if I can find those emails… Here, I found one of the mails: > [@](#): > > Dated 19th Jan, 2002. > > \> comment: this domain name has expired according to your records, but > \> it is not available for purchase. can you give me a specific date when > \> it will be available for me to purchase this domain name ? are there > \> any pending legalities or payments to be made between the current > \> owner and netsol that is preventing this domain name to be made > \> available to others for purchase ? thanks. > > Thank you for contacting VeriSign. > > VeriSign, Inc., periodically deletes domain names that are up > for deletion in bulk since bulk deletion better enables us to > insure that only those domain names that are actually up for > deletion are properly deleted (as compared to running a deletion > process). > > The dates on which these bulk deletions occur are arbitrarily > selected by our engineering department based upon system loading > and other technical factors. In order to protect against > an overload of our systems, we do not disclose these deletion dates. > > You may, therefore, either continue to check our site for the > availability of the domain name and attempt to obtain it through > the public registration process, contact [http://www.snapnames.com](http://www.snapnames.com) to attempt to back-order this domain, or, in the alternative, contact > the listed registrant directly and discuss the possibility of > executing a registrant name change agreement. > > To visit our WHOIS database to locate registrant information for > a domain, please go to: > > [http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois](http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois) > > Best regards, > DArla P > VeriSign, Inc. > [http://www.networksolutions.com](http://www.networksolutions.com) This was in 2002, maybe they’ve changed their system now, maybe not.