Domain name reassignment foils Google
Direct reassignment of expired domain names is foiling Google in its attempts to clean up its search results.
When Google disclosed it had become an ICANN-accredited registrar, the world questioned what the firm’s ambitions were for domain names. This issue was further confounded when Google disclosed that it wouldn’t offer domain registration to the public. Why become a registrar if you aren’t going to register domains?
In March 2005 I discussed my beliefs for why Google became a registrar. At the time I stated:
Regarding a year ago Google started “deleting” from its index domains that were regarding to expire. This helped stop people from buying expired domains to use the popularity the previous web site had. But then sites like SnapNames started offering a service to get expired domains ahead of they completed the domain dropping cycle, thereby retaining link popularity and indexing. With a better handle on which domains are deleting from each registrar, they might be able to combat this. Google might also be able to cross reference changes in the registrant name.
If you get a domain through direct reassignment at SnapNames or another drop catcher, the domain typically retains its original registration date, even if it was 1994.
At the recent ICANN meeting in Morocco, Google’s “Chief Internet Evangelist” Vint Cerf verified that this was part of the reason the firm became a registrar.
>>VINT CERF: When a domain name has expired, and then it’s re-assigned to someone else, what happens to the SOA record for that domain name as to its start date? Does that change automatically or does it stay the same or are there circumstances where a domain name changes hands but it doesn’t look like it has if you are looking at its birth date?
>>PAT KANE: If a name is transferred, the date stays the same.
>>VINT CERF: Okay. So that’s a problem for Google. And it’s one of the reasons that we became a registrar, but it didn’t help.
We were hoping that we could detect that something had changed hands and that, therefore, we ought to invalidate a lot of things sitting in the cache that referred to the former content of that domain name.
>>PAUL STAHURA: I can answer that. You can still do that since you can monitor the WHOIS and if you see the WHOIS change, then you note the date.
It’s true that Google can still moniter changes to Whois to know when a domain changes hands. But it’s not that easy. For example, if CNET decides to change the Whois record for its domains to some other entity, such as CNET Holdings, then it might appear that the domain has changed hands even though it hasn’t.
