Expiring Domains - Main reasons that domains expire

[Federer]

What are your views on the main reasons that thousands of domain names expire on a daily basis? Sometimes the figure is as high as 80,000 per day.
I thought that a certain amount was due to forgetfullness, but most registrars send out multiple reminders to the registrant upon expiry and also at the pending delete stage. Some could think that it could be due to the contact details (email and address)not being updated... but again, quite a few registrars now end out regular emails asking if your contact details are valid and up-to-date - this would remind the registrant of the importants of always keeping his contact details updated.
Why is it then that so many domains continue to expire, in the hundreds of thousands, week-in week-out?

Maybe people just don't "need" the domain anymore?
Maybe the business "failed" or shut down?
Maybe the prior owner doesn't understand the value or positive impact that a good keyword domain COULD have for another individual or business?

Would love to have your views on the main reasons.....

 

[uliss]

Because registrars send out spam-amount of notification and marketing Email. Their IP is more easily be belocked.

When the Email do not arrive the registrant, without notification how a name holder remember renew which domain in which day.

So, you must choose a proper regsitrar. who do not spam, do not allow spam.

 

[uliss]

repeated

 

[JoshuaPz]

Business failed, owner passed away or was hospitalized for extended period, whois contact left / was fired from company and whois details were never updated, business merge / consolidation, sudden change of e-mail address (in which case the "keep your contact info up-to-date" e-mails will never reach the owner), auto-renew credit card on file expired, renewal notifications caught in spam filter, company/individual didn't need domain anymore and wasn't aware of its value, owner went on extended vacation and forgot about domain name, website owner couldn't reach "shady" IT admin. to figure out how to renew the name, domain owner trying to cut costs, domain owner wanted to flip the name quickly but couldn't, portfolio trimming ("I keep my XX names and always drop the others"), owner is so wealthy it simply wasn't worth his/her time to renew the name and he/she could always but it back later, owner received renewal notices but kept putting renewal off anyway until it was too late, owner received C&D letter from an established company and cancelled registration, domain seized or suspended due to illegal activity / shady business practices / TM infringement / banning by Google, and dozens upon dozens of other reasons. I don't think a single reason among these stands out as the most common.

 

[asdomar]

IMHO many endusers forget to renew the domain. They are not domainers, and they don't read emails. They have many other things to do. So it happens.

 

[MicroGuy]

Registrars are the dealers, dealing in hope and letter grouping highs.

After a few months of zero traffic and 2-cent clicks on Sedo, the domain registrant (aka domain junkie) comes down from his registration high with the shakes needing a new domain to get his fix. The old domain no longer provides the rush his trembling body needs thus he lets it expire.

 

[gazzip]

Registrars are the dealers, dealing in hope and letter grouping highs.

After a few months of zero traffic and 2-cent clicks on Sedo, the domain registrant (aka domain junkie) comes down from his registration high with the shakes needing a new domain to get his fix. The old domain no longer provides the rush his trembling body needs thus he lets it expire.

:bingo: I bet a good half of them are dropped by domainers, as Frank S put it....

Domains Expire Every Day

"In the past, the average daily-list of expiring domain names was reflective of the broader registered namespace. If 20,000 names expired, that would mirror a random sampling of 20,000 names from the registry zone file. Today, quality expiring names are even scarcer due to registrar/auction-house name withholding. Additionally, the high renewal rates and exhaustion of the name-space mean that a diminishing percentage of ‘all names’ meet this meaningful , resonant criteria. Today it’s 7-12% of names that fall into my “good bucket”.. in 5 years as more made up schlock gets added to the zone-file mix, it will be 5-7% of all names registered that have meaning.

To put this in perspective, the types of names which constitute my theoretical “best 7-12%” of all names registered include all 2 and 3 character names, nearly all 4 letters, any search-term no matter how far down the long-tail. It includes zip codes and popular screen-names, first/last name combos that are popular/less popular, pretty much anything that means anything to anybody and a second or third person. It includes the best .info’s .us names (even .mobi’s)… All the “good ones” amount to just 7-12% of all names registered. The rest is an ever circulating torrent of backfill which expires and gets replaced in a grand water like cycle, with new garbage.. A never ending boulevard of broken dreams to come."


....Sounds kinda depressing but if you spend any time in the drops its pretty obvious that a HUGE amount are being dropped by domainers every day, I'v dropped a fair few over the last year and picked up a few that I know other domainers have dropped

My guess is GoDaddy will end up with the vast majority of dropping names....sooner or later.


.

 

[enlytend]

Agree with gazzip (and Frank S.) - most domains are dropped by other domainers. After that, throwaway domains used for spam, blackhat sites, testing... (which is why sometimes you pick up an expired domain with a built-in Google penalty)

For "real" users, probably a combination of the other reasons already mentioned. Didn't need it anymore, forgot to renew, didnt' realize they HAD to renew ...

 

[Fka200]

I think death might also play some sort of role in the daily dropped domains--specifically for "quality" domains.

 

[DotWeekly]

Business failed, owner passed away or was hospitalized for extended period, whois contact left / was fired from company and whois details were never updated, business merge / consolidation, sudden change of e-mail address (in which case the "keep your contact info up-to-date" e-mails will never reach the owner), auto-renew credit card on file expired, renewal notifications caught in spam filter, company/individual didn't need domain anymore and wasn't aware of its value, owner went on extended vacation and forgot about domain name, website owner couldn't reach "shady" IT admin. to figure out how to renew the name, domain owner trying to cut costs, domain owner wanted to flip the name quickly but couldn't, portfolio trimming ("I keep my XX names and always drop the others"), owner is so wealthy it simply wasn't worth his/her time to renew the name and he/she could always but it back later, owner received renewal notices but kept putting renewal off anyway until it was too late, owner received C&D letter from an established company and cancelled registration, domain seized or suspended due to illegal activity / shady business practices / TM infringement / banning by Google, and dozens upon dozens of other reasons. I don't think a single reason among these stands out as the most common.

The above about sums it up!

I would say the main reasons are:
Dead / Old email that is not checked
Expired credit card on file
Do not want / need the domain any longer (not aware of value if there is some)

Auto Renew I'm sure prevents a good deal of drops, but like with NSI, you have to set auto renew on, where most registrars make it default.

 

[garptrader]

JoshuaPZ lists a number of reasons why non-domainers drop domains but I believe most drops are because domainer portfolios have many domains which should never have been registered in the first place and should be dropped to conserve cash. Anyone ever downloaded the drop list at Namejet/Snapnames and taken a look at the names someone registered sometime in the past?

 

[matrigaldo]

Yes garptrader, i use to do that when i feel like i've registered/acquired a bad domain.

It makes me feel very better.

 

[meipuo]

my business ideas never materialized, so I let the domain names die.

 

[sashas]

I just lost a domain last week because the registrar sent me a ridiculous number of spam and/or repeat emails that I'd simply trained myself to ignore all emails from that registrar (I had just one domain there). When the domain expiration email came to my inbox, I didn't notice that either and sent it to the trash can.

 

[Archangel]

I haven't read all of this thread but let me tell you a few of the reasons:

1.) Forgetfulness
2.) Lack of desire to keep them
3.) Illness (resulting in hospitalization)
4.) Jail/prison (and therefore ppl are unable to renew)
5.) Death
6.) Personal reasons that make a person unaware of their domains (like #1 basically). Example: A person falls into deep depression and their mind blocks out everything but the thing making them depressed.

There are others but these seem to be the biggest reasons.

---------- Post added at 03:07 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:04 PM ----------

Another good reason to list.

auto-renew credit card on file expired

 

[BitcoinDK]

#1 They can't afford it.

 

[Jaco]

The main reason domains are let to drop is because so many of them are useless garbage.
The barriers of entry to the domain game have drifted steadily downward for the past decade and a half... It's to the point now that any idiot with a debit card can register one. The existing namespace is simply a tell-tale example of the stupidity of the general public.

Now, if your question is "why do GOOD domains drop"- that one domain amongst ten thousand others that is worth a great deal of money- people have elaborated reasons for that already. Death or other forms of incapacitates are a possible reason. The main reason, though, is that its probably a case of someone who bought it for a purpose- back when it had little to no value-, no longer needs it for that purpose and has absolutely no idea how much they've grown in value in the intervening years.

This is pretty much standard in any field where the value of something blows up in an exponential fashion in a relatively short period of time. In the 1980's and 1990's, people in the US were maniacal over collecting vintage baseball cards. You always heard stories about someone finding a shoebox full of old cards at a garage sale that turned out to be worth tens of thousands. The reason the owner sold them? Because they had no idea what they had. This is the main reason for killer domains dropping.
That, and when businesses tend to go busto, domains they registered for a few bucks ten or fifteen years ago aren't denominated as an asset, so if no one around the office is aware of it's value, they just let it expire.

 

[Federer]

Thanks, these reasons pretty much sum up why such good domains drop each and every day. I wonder if in say 10 years from now, great domains will still be dropping for the same reasons. At some stage, however, the prime domain properties of this world will no doubt end up in the hands of the ultimate end users or big player domain investors.

 

[the_poet]

What kind of GOOD dropped domains did you handreg in the (recent) past? Is there any way to know what domains are about to drop?

 

[Bannen]

Long tail
Seeing a LOT of long tail domains being dropped, even quite good ones; parking was a lot better a couple years ago and it was worth regging/parking decent long tail terms; parking has crashed in the last year, long tail names are earning squat thru parking, and with that revenue down 60% or more many domainers with huge long tail portfolios aren't even making the reg fee for their long tail names... have a hard time finding end users for them... and are either letting most drop, or experimenting with minisites on the better ones and letting questionable ones drop. I'm finding a lot of good long tail names expiring, names that wouldn't make anything parked, would be a hard sell to end users, but are ideal for minisites.