Well, it wasn’t much of an accident. I took a domain that was several years old, and a PR3, but I hadn’t done much with it for months. The domain was to expire on 19th of January 2011. I let it. A few days later the site stopped resolving and was replaced by a parked page.
On the 28th of February I was sent the message that the domain was to be deleted that day. I still waited and on the 1st of March I renewed the domain.
As of the 3rd of March Google reported the domain as grey PR (using the SEO Book toolbar) and no cache date. Searching for the domain name (which is a unique phrase) and my domain wasn’t returned.
Now it’s the end of the month, and I’ve searched again. The domain is returned as the second result and the Page Rank now appears as PR1 with a cache date of 3 weeks ago.
The domain remained a PR3 after the January Google Page Rank update so the drop unfortunate and looks like it was recalculated after the expiry. As regards the cache, as the domain still gets no content love from me so the date is reasonable.
I don’t like this, but I guess it makes sense. It does make it clear, that any domain worth its salt needs a 5-year purchase every time, I think, and the benefit of early renewals. I used to lose Go Daddy domains, because they bombard you with so much BS email, I skipped over the expiration warnings, which were mixed in below the sales pitches. I had so many domains in there, I would just miss some – until I figured out you could do yearly updates. So I trimmed off the excess as much as I could, and paid them once a year for everything. Prevented me from risking losing them – and there is a bigger risk too.
When a domain expires, it now gets locked-up by the registrar for a period of time after the expiration. This safety margin has always been there (to allow domain owners a chance to keep their stuff), but they figured out how to leverage big fees if you renew it during this time. Last year, we had a corporate domain expire that they wanted back immediately, and I think I paid over $100 in fees to renew a $7 domain, that I owned for over 2 years prior. But they had me by the short hairs, and I had no choice. Nice way to do business. 🙁
So don’t let them expire. I believe is the drill. You’ve given me more cement to this logical argument. 🙂