Internet Marketers Gets Stomped by Register Fly!

Do you get burned…. by losing your domain….. find out to protect your domain.

From Site Pro News……

On March 16th, the International Corporation for Assigned Names & Numbers (ICANN) publicly de-accredited the domain registrar RegisterFly.com for fundamental contractual breaches. BusinessWeek Online appropriately called the RegisterFly.com debacle a “Train wreck” and although this is not SEO-related I think StepForth SEO Blog readers should be kept in the know about this situation. Perhaps this post will help you protect your domain(s) and ultimately your livelihoods from future train wrecks. To that end, I have outlined some tips at the end of this post that will serve as a checklist to help protect you.

Internet Marketers Protecting Domains

1. Do the research and check out background and reputation of domain and registrars. Search for the domain and then a common complaint and you will find any info that can help you. For example do this with RegisterFly.com and you will see exactly what I mean.

2. Stay away from hosting with your registrar or using their DNS because downtime on their part can result in a 404 error page..

3. Be careful registering your domain with a hosting company. Just like a registrar, a hosting company can leave you in hot water if it goes South. Generally hosting companies are just resellers of domains so all is not lost; with some effort you may be able to skirt around the hosting company and contact the core domain registrar.

4. If you must make your whois information private then use a 3rd party privacy service - one that is not directly affiliated with your registrar. This way you can be reasonably sure that your privacy options are under your control only.

5. Do NOT allow your registrar or hosting company to have any stake in your domain whois records. For example, making a hosting company contact the Admin of your domain opens you up to potential problems.

6. Make certain your whois information is accurate so you can be contacted should complications arise. You are out of luck if privacy is in effect but that should be an understood sacrifice of such a specialized service.

7. Register important domains for a few years instead of just one so that you can be sure you will not lose your domain to renewal should you find yourself with a bad registrar.