Expired domain

Domain names are rented by the year. If the owner stops paying, the name eventually returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Such names are valued for what they inherit: links from other websites still point to them, people still have them bookmarked, and search engines may remember them. Specialists who grab them at the moment of release are known as drop catchers.

In arbitrage and parking, an expired domain is a source of leftover visitors. The new owner can park it, forward its visitors (domain redirect traffic) or build a new site on it to borrow the old site's reputation.

The risks fall on several parties. Visitors expect the old site and get something else. Advertisers pay for clicks from people who arrived by habit, with no interest in what is advertised. Search engines treat buying an expired name mainly to exploit its past standing with low-value content as a form of spam. And for the buyer, a name with a bad history, such as past spam or fraud, may already sit on a blocklist.

An expired domain is a legitimate asset when rebuilt into something useful to the people who still visit it.

An example

A local bakery closes and lets its domain lapse. A new owner registers it, and people following old links to the bakery's menu now land on whatever the new owner chooses to show.