Governments Shouldn’t Let Domains Expire

Bad things happen to former government owned domain names.

I just finished reading a story form The Ottawa Citizen regarding how Canada’s 100th anniversary of flight web site expired and (at least briefly) showed ads for escorts.

For the Canadian government it got the worst possible outcome. The domain name wasn’t just a parked domain; someone actively tried to take advantage of its prior use. The fresh owner apparently left a notice on the page:

“To previous domain owner: We bought this domain following expiration so it’s not our fault that you lost it. We put old content for this domain only to avoid losing good quality of it from SEO point of view. If it’s a problem for you contact us ASAP!”

The page now resolves to a simple parked page. But either way it’s embarrassing for the government with all of those links from respectable sites linking to the expired domain.

I came across a similar situation a couple months ago. The City of Austin let a domain name expire but still had time to redeem it. It had promoted this domain in print and web communications. When I notified the city’s tech department regarding the situation, the response was “oh yeah, we’re rebranding to a fresh domain name.”

That’s great, but for $10 a year you may as well renew and forward the old one.