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An Expired Custom Domain Registration Is Up For Grabs

If your blog is published to a Google custom domain, you may be happily updating your blog one day, and get a panicked email from a friend
What happened to your blog? I'm seeing a GoDaddy advertisement!
or
I'm getting 404 Not Found when I try to view your blog! What's the problem now?
and if that's the case for you, then you need to act, now.

Not long ago, I got an odd email.
Hi Chuck,

I'm Nagarajan from India. I bought your domain Nitecruzr.Net through a GoDaddy auction. I just want to make sure that whether you sold your domain to GoDaddy, or by any chance it went for auction ? Also, I would like to know about your willingness to get back your domain Nitecruzr.Net.


Long story short, I had thought that I placed the renewal last month, and omitted to verify that the payment went through. And I was very lucky that Jasa Nagarajan, who buys and sells domains, had noticed the auction, and that he picked up the domain.

This wasn't the end of the story, nor of my advice to you. This is just the beginning. I was able to contact GoDaddy, and with encouragement from Jasa, was able to re purchase the domain (which is how you're able to read this narrative). However, as an expired domain
  • The registration price went up significantly.
  • I have to deal directly with GoDaddy, next year.
  • On the day that I got the domain back, I had to spend an hour setting up the DNS addresses again.
So, should you be able to renew your domain registration on time, I highly recommend that you do so. I definitely won't let this happen, next year, by preference.

And if you're reading this because your domain has recently expired, I suggest that you act now - contact your registrar, and renew the registration. You may not be so lucky as I was. Fortunately, it's not difficult to identify an expired domain.

Even if you're lucky, and the domain is available, you have a bit of work to do. But do this today - don't wait.
  1. Talk to a CSR at the registrar. Pay the registration - plus a penalty. They own the domain, so you pay or forget about it.
  2. Get your DNS addresses reset. Right now, the domain is parked, with the registrar picking up the income from the ads served by their domain parked server.
  3. Publish the blog back to BlogSpot, then re publish to the domain.

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Comments

Annie said…
That's really frightening! Welcome back, Nitecruzr.
Unknown said…
Man so i think i will stay with blogspot.com
Anna M. Lewis said…
Exactly what I had to do. Yes, I learned my lesson!

Ummm... now GoDaddy is asking for my pin... awaiting an answer from Google but it seems like others have had the same problem. Did you?
Anna
Yosh. O said…
I'm trying to renew my custom domain, and they are not letting me at all. I contacted Enom, and they said google is the registrar, and google does not have any customer support.
Nitecruzr said…
Domain purchase and renewal are handled under Google Apps. You get support from the Google Apps Support Forum.
My Inner said…
This happened to me too

I am not buying a domain again.. staying with blogspot.
I think this is happening to me. Domain is now ads and searches. I purchased with blogger about a year ago. Who should I contact and what should I do?
Nitecruzr said…
I think this is happening to me.

Contact your registrar, today.
My domain expired 3 days ago because the auto-renew linked to an expired card. woops. I followed links found in e-mails from Google Apps that allowed me to pay for and retrieve my domain name and now my blogger "publishing" panel and my google apps dashboard say everything is running fine but, as you can see when you visit themelissamonster.com, my URL is now occupied by an add. I'm not a tech person. What the hell do I do about this? Someone help please.

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