A domain name is not bought, it is rented. A registry grants an exclusive right of use for a fixed term, renewable, usually between one and ten years. Every year, part of that stock is not renewed. The French registry Afnic, which runs .fr, gives an order of magnitude for its own zone: a retention rate of 82.2% for .fr in 2025, against 82.6% in 2024 and 83.4% in 2023, across 4,319,120 registered names at 31 December 2025. Those are French figures for a French extension, but the mechanism is the same everywhere.
Dropped names interest two very different audiences. On one side, companies that want to recover a domain they let slip, or stop someone else using a name that carries their brand. On the other, buyers hoping to inherit the previous site's authority and rank faster. Since March 2024 that second practice has a name in Google's spam policies, and a documented consequence.
An expired domain is not an available domain
Several weeks pass between the expiry date and the moment anyone can register the name again. For generic extensions (.com, .net, .org), that calendar is framed by ICANN's expiration and renewal rules, which registrars are bound to follow.
| Stage | What happens | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Active registration | The registrant holds the right of use. The registrar must send renewal reminders before the expiry date and just after it. | 1 to 10 years |
| Late renewal | The domain often stops resolving, but the registrant can still take it back. Terms and fees depend on the registrar. | Variable |
| Redemption period | Deletion is under way. Only the former registrant can restore the name, through their registrar, normally for a redemption fee. | 30 days |
| PendingDelete | No restoration is possible any more. The name is waiting to be released. | 5 days |
| Release | The name can be registered again, on a first come, first served basis. | — |
Country-code registries run their own variations on the same idea. Afnic applies a 30-day redemption period for .fr, during which the holder can still cancel the deletion and no other registration request is accepted. After that, deletion is final.
Inside those windows, getting your domain back is an administrative task with your provider. After release, it becomes a race you may well lose.
What Google changed in March 2024
On 5 March 2024, Google announced three new spam policies, one of them expired domain abuse. The definition now sits in the official spam policies: buying and repurposing an expired domain mainly to manipulate search rankings, by hosting content that offers, in Google's words, "little or no value to users".
The examples Google gives leave little room for interpretation: affiliate content on a domain once used by a government agency, commercial medical products on a charity's former domain, casino content on the old site of a primary school. Google adds that this never happens by accident, and that such domains are not meant to be found except through a search engine.
Two consequences follow. The first is ranking loss: an affected site can rank lower, or not appear at all. The second is a manual action, notified in Search Console, with a reconsideration request needed once the problem is fixed. The risk lands on the whole project, not on a handful of pages.
What is still allowed
The policy does not condemn buying a dropped name as such. Google states plainly that an old domain can host a new, original site built primarily to help people. What it targets is the intent to borrow a name's past reputation for worthless content. So these cases are not at issue: taking back your own company's domain, buying the domain of a competitor you have acquired, securing a brand variant, or rebuilding a genuine site on a relevant name.
Three signals should make you pause. The content you plan has nothing to do with the previous site. The traffic you expect comes only from Google. The main appeal of the domain is its inbound links. If all three are true, you are inside Google's definition, however clean your migration is.
Recovering your own domain: three windows, three costs
In smaller companies the common scenario is not speculative buying. It is forgetting: a secondary domain, an old name kept after a redesign, an extension registered for one campaign. Three situations, in order of difficulty.
- Before expiry. A simple renewal. While you are in the account, check the administrative contact's email address in the Whois record: out-of-date details are the standard reason a registrant never sees the expiry warning.
- During restoration. Contact your registrar immediately. The operation is usually possible, but it is charged, and often costs considerably more than a renewal.
- After release. The name is open to everyone. You are left with the secondary market or a capture service, with no guarantee on either the outcome or the price.
If a redesign is on your roadmap, plan to keep the old domain for several years after the switch and to redirect it properly. Google treats permanent redirects (301, 308) as a strong signal for the canonical URL, and temporary ones (302, 303, 307) as no such signal: its redirect documentation recommends a permanent server-side redirect when a URL changes for good.
# Apache: permanent redirect to the new domain
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^old-domain\.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.new-domain.com/$1 [R=301,L]A temporary redirect left in place for years, followed by a non-renewal, is the most ordinary way to lose rankings and name in the same month.
Protecting a brand is a legal route, not an SEO one
If someone else has picked up a domain that carries your brand, the question is legal, not editorial. For .fr, Afnic administers the Syreli procedure: 250 euros excluding tax in procedural fees, payable by the claimant, for a decision issued within two months. For generic extensions, the UDRP is administered by centres including WIPO, which announced on 14 January 2026 that it handled more than 6,200 domain name cases in 2025, its highest figure since the UDRP began.
Both routes assume a prior right — a registered trade mark, a company name — and use in bad faith. Neither exists to recover a generic name you let expire through inattention.
How dropped domains are actually caught
The global market stays busy: Verisign's quarterly DNIB report, published on 23 July 2026, counted 401.6 million registered domain names across all extensions at the end of June 2026, up 8.1% year on year. On names people want, competition is settled in fractions of a second.
Automated capture, or snapping, is an organised activity, registries included. Afnic offers registrars a dedicated server, .FR Rush, restricted to check and create operations, with an imposed delay of 0.1 second between operations and first come, first served enforced. Someone refreshing a registration form by hand has close to no chance on a name anybody else wants.
That leaves three routes. Backorder platforms charge for the capture attempt and auction the name between their own clients when several want it. Registrar marketplaces sell names at prices reflecting commercial value, not link profiles. Public drop lists mainly teach you how the market behaves: names with real potential go upstream, at auction, before they reach one.
The minimum checks before buying
- History. Run the domain through the Wayback Machine on archive.org. A name can have had several lives, some of them involving counterfeiting, gambling or hacked content.
- Link profile. Look at who actually points to the domain, and from what kind of site. Volume tells you little on its own: this is the work described on our backlink audit page.
- Topical consistency. The wider the gap between the old subject and yours, the closer you sit to the examples Google published.
- Third-party rights. Check that no registered trade mark, company name or personal name is involved. A cheap domain with a trade mark inside it is not cheap.
- Status in Google. After the purchase, verify ownership in Search Console: an inherited manual action is visible there, and checking what is indexed shows what the search engine knows about the name.
One comparison is worth making before you commit. Whatever you plan to spend on an expired domain should be weighed against what the same budget would produce elsewhere: content, visibility, links earned directly. Treat a dropped name as an option, never as the backbone of a strategy. The March 2024 policy has made that shortcut markedly less profitable than it once was.
Common questions
How long after expiry can anyone register a domain?
For generic extensions such as .com, expect a 30-day redemption period during which only the former registrant can restore the name, then five days of pendingDelete status before release. Country-code registries set their own equivalents: Afnic applies a 30-day redemption period for .fr. The late renewal phase before it varies by registrar.
Does Google forbid buying expired domains?
No. The policy targets expired domain abuse: a purchase made mainly to manipulate rankings by hosting content with no real value. Google's documentation is explicit that an old domain can carry a new, original site built for people. The test is intent and what you publish, not the purchase.
What happens to a site that recycles an expired domain to rank?
It can rank lower, or disappear from results entirely. If a manual action is issued for spam, the owner is notified in Search Console, fixes the problem, then files a reconsideration request. Recovery is neither guaranteed nor quick.
I forgot to renew my domain. Can I still get it back?
Yes, as long as it has not been released. Contact your registrar straight away: during the restoration phase they are the only party who can bring the name back, normally for a fee well above a renewal. Once released, the name is open to everyone.
Someone has registered a domain containing my brand. What now?
This is a legal question, not a search one. For .fr, Afnic's Syreli procedure costs 250 euros excluding tax in procedural fees, with a decision within two months. For generic extensions, the UDRP is administered by centres including WIPO. Both require a prior right and evidence of bad faith use.
Does an expired domain really pass on the old site's authority?
Not automatically, and not for long. Historical links decay as the pages carrying them change or disappear, a change of subject reduces whatever relevance they had, and Google has treated opportunistic recycling as spam since March 2024. Weigh the cost against a conventional content and link programme.