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Domain expired for one day - site gone from Google

vivalasvegas

4:16 pm on May 1, 2009 (gmt 0)

I accidentally let one domain of mine expire and renewed it after it showed an "expired domain" message for a day or so. A few days later the site is gone from Google with no traffic at all from this SE. Even when searching for the url my website is nowhere to be found.

My question: has anyone experienced this and what did you do? I'm thinking of submitting a reinclusion request. Or should I wait to see what happens? How long to wait? This is a 7 year old domain with good backlinks.

Thanks..

tedster

1:17 am on May 2, 2009 (gmt 0)

I know of a couple cases. They renewed the domain, made sure the site was live again and it re-appeared in the index within a few days. If the process seems to get stuck, I'd suggest a reconsideration request - but in the cases I know of, that wasn't needed.

vivalasvegas

12:41 pm on May 4, 2009 (gmt 0)

Thanks Ted, the site is back indeed with the same traffic it had:-)

chrisfaron

1:43 pm on May 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

Happened to me as well with 2 domains, Google pr (on the toolbar)was reset to 0 & rankings lowered.
After renewing domains I had to send a re-inclusion request & rankings & PR was restored on both domains.

Faithson

2:02 pm on May 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

Yes, you are right. Google is very good in handling expired domain where they have their own logic to handle this. Thanks

nealrodriguez

2:34 pm on May 6, 2009 (gmt 0)

i've also seen this happen when sites go down for a few days; google is typically good at restoring previous rankings.

Bennie

10:31 am on May 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

What Tedster said!

I let one drop for a few days and had the same experience early this month.

fathom

11:11 am on May 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

I suspect "google did absolutely nothing"... beyond what it normally does when it crawls and updates your domain on the fly.

If you look at the "expired process" as merely a major website redesign... if you have widgets on an established domain and one day decide to switch to portapotties... you would probably get the identical effects as you saw with your domain "gist" switch to some other gist... including all new web pages (possibly even a new homepage location).

robzilla

2:39 pm on May 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

Dare I ask? How are Yahoo, MSN/Live and Ask handling this?

Lord Majestic

2:53 pm on May 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

This expiration probably caused the domain to change IP to be hosted on those horrible IPs that park millions of domains - they won't (or shouldn't) rank because all they get there are PPC ads.

Bennie

11:41 pm on May 10, 2009 (gmt 0)

No @fathom Google are handling expired domains differently and de-listing them MUCH FASTER!

stephen186

8:56 am on May 11, 2009 (gmt 0)

So, i guess we can conclude that it is a good practice to buy some expired domains instead of registering new one and develop that domain.

But always research that domain info before buying it.

robzilla

10:14 am on May 11, 2009 (gmt 0)

i guess we can conclude that it is a good practice to buy some expired domains instead of registering new one and develop that domain

I think you've missed the point. Generally, when a domain has expired and is registered again, Google believes that the new owner should start from scratch, so they reset all ranking factors, like PageRank. This thread, however, shows that, manually or algorithmically, they are able to make a distinction between unintentionally and intentionally expired domains.