Cheated for a Domain Name, Need Technical Help

[John1968]

our business website forums are running since 2 year
now we have a problem with the domain name, person who registered the domain had internal disputes and started his own business on the same domain name. www.olddomain.com
The issue only resides with the domain name, all other data for site database, customers, server provider are registered with us. Since we did not had any legal agreement for the domain, we cannot do anything for old domain

At last, we have to shift to a new domin www.newdomain.com
our old domain has a pageranking 7.0 and we get around 25000 visits daily from search engines, there are more then 15000 registered users.

If we start with a new domain name will this effect our business as we target our customers only from forums.
How long it should take for the new domain to get traffic like before as we had more then 25000 uniques daily and what would be the best way to get the things started immediately ?

 

[Midano]

Ahhhhhhhh.... Classic newbie mistake.

The bad news - you're screwed big time. So back to square one.

The good news - you still have all data and content, so blast an email to all registered members to make them aware of the new domain. Contact websites that were linked to your old domain and tell them to update the links. For time being all search traffic is lost for you. Submit new URL to search engines and wait. When you get crawled and forum pages indexed - you will get some of search traffic back.

Good luck and next time - don't trust anybody. Make sure that your domain IS yours.

 

[John1968]

hey midano,
can you estimate how long this should take for us to build the entire search engine traffic back ?
We are more concerned of our search engine traffic

Can you please guide me on some internet resources which can help us make a very good domain name ?

 

[Midano]

A couple of weeks, but your search traffic won't be anywhere close to what you had until new domain gets some Google PR.

 

[netPH]

Seek a lawyer's advice... File a complaint in a court of proper jurisdiction against the domain-name holder :imho:

Good luck

 

[John1968]

Seek a lawyer's advice... File a complaint in a court of proper jurisdiction against the domain-name holder :imho:

Good luck

this is not possible netPh in any case today, we can tried our best for filing a case, legal laws but it wont work out.

 

[IAmAllanShore]

A couple of weeks, but your search traffic won't be anywhere close to what you had until new domain gets some Google PR.

The PR thing is a fun game, not a search engine traffic builder....

To get your search engine traffic back? Honestly? Probably never.

I would be interested to hear what legal avenues you pursued and why they don't work... There has to be something else here.

-Allan

 

[jeter4982]

The PR thing is a fun game, not a search engine traffic builder....

To get your search engine traffic back? Honestly? Probably never.

I would be interested to hear what legal avenues you pursued and why they don't work... There has to be something else here.

-Allan

I agree. The only way you will even get close to that amount of traffic back, is if you spend a massive advertising budget, and even with that, it would be tough. Sorry!

 

[Midano]

The PR thing is a fun game, not a search engine traffic builder....

Well, I didn't say it's a traffic builder (although I think it kinda is). The PR is combined of meta/content relevance and incoming links, which are treated as votes and increase your positions.

 

[IAmAllanShore]

Well, I didn't say it's a traffic builder (although I think it kinda is). The PR is combined of meta/content relevance and incoming links, which are treated as votes and increase your positions.

Not in my experience... What you may be thinking of is Google-bombing type behavior, but then again I might be completely misunderstanding you.

I have sites that are PR6 that are below PR1 sites for certain keywords, but then I have PR0 sites that are way above PR8 sites for other keywords.

PR doesn't mean specific keyword results, but just links in general. I haven't seen a correlation between an increase or decrease in search engine traffic as a result of PR changes.

-Allan

 

[jopros]

interesting story

 

[John1968]

thank you for all your feedback, but we still have not got answer to main technical problem

how much time will it take for us to get our entire domain traffic back ?

 

[IAmAllanShore]

thank you for all your feedback, but we still have not got answer to main technical problem

how much time will it take for us to get our entire domain traffic back ?

My bet (If you had that much on the front end), never.

Unless you're ready to spend $$$ to get new users and win over/back your old users.

-Allan

 

[EricH]

thank you for all your feedback, but we still have not got answer to main technical problem

how much time will it take for us to get our entire domain traffic back ?

The reason you have no answer yet is because that's an unanswerable question. It really depends on many veriables.

- What was your orignal domain
- What is your new domain
- Is your new domain easier/harder to remember
- Is your new domain easier/harder to find
- Will old members be easily persuaded to go to the new site
- How quickly will Google/SE's index your new site
- How often will Google/SE's index your new site
- Who "made" the old site what it was (personality wise)
- Is your new site as "cool" as your old site
- After a "split" will the members feel scorned themselves
- ... many others

There really is no way of knowing an answer such as this. The WWW is wild animal that is extremely unpredictable. You may have your site up for xx years and never see the same amount of traffic, or you may have it up for a week when some content on your site drives amazing amounts of traffic to your site.

I don't know if you've ever heard of JibJab, they make political (US) cartoons. I think they put it best on the Tonight show after one of their cartoons spread like wildfire; "Two days ago we were putting together this cartoon in the warehouse that we work in, now we're on the tonight show." You just never know when it comes to the WWW.

 

[John1968]

- What was your orignal domain

xy-z.com

- What is your new domain

new domain can be xy-z.info or xyz.net or completely differnt xyzhosting.com

- Is your new domain easier/harder to remember

it will be easier to remember then old domain name

- Is your new domain easier/harder to find

thats the answe i am looking for, we are concerned only about search engine traffic as this builds up our new customers

- Will old members be easily persuaded to go to the new site

20% new members might quit but we are not bothered about this, these members are forums members who dont yeild/help in business

- How quickly will Google/SE's index your new site

google visits our forums thrice a week on old domain name

- How often will Google/SE's index your new site

this is the question i have to ask

- Who "made" the old site what it was (personality wise)

Me and group of few people,

- Is your new site as "cool" as your old site

new site is completely same except the domain name, its just like namepros.com changed to prosname.com or something else.

- After a "split" will the members feel scorned themselves

we are not sure about this, but we least bother, we need to run the business based on guest visitors..
this question is putup beause it contains blood for our business

 

[identity_00]

How do you know the domain owner didnt get a copy of your site?

 

[John1968]

How do you know the domain owner didnt get a copy of your site?

because another group owner maitains this system who is a trusted person
there is no sharing of database done