messiah01

Hi all, I am considering setting up a business so I was typing in possible domain names to purchase when I discovered the main business generic for the sector was free. I brought it and found that it had been dropped 2 months before by a large company in the sector that had held it for quite a few years (presumably to focus on their company name domain).

The interesting thing is despite me leaving the name servers on the default 123-reg.co.uk ones, when I type the domain into my address bar it takes me to the companies old site on that domain! I'm quite new to this can anyone tell me why this would happen still when it was dropped 4 months ago and supposedly being on new 123 nameservers for 2 months?

Also the domain is currently ranked 5th in Google for the main search phrase (handy!). I want to try and keep this spot so can anyone tell me how I should proceed while I'm developing the site, which could take a while? + any advice on how to build my website with keeping this Google rank or moving higher in mind?

Thanks

golddiggerguy

I'm guessing you don't have a site up yet! ping the domain and get an I.P. of the site to help find out where it's hosted.

The domain might have been with 123-REG and the DNS still is there pointing to there old servers with the site files still active.

Google the domain or use archive.org to get old site structures saving you having to use 303 redirects as recreating the old structure may help and this should help Google take pity maybe

Maybe copy the titles, keywords, and other SEO info they used. NOT images or content!! copy right laws and all that not worth it.

PM the domain and i'll take a look for you if you want.

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accelerator

Are you sure the nameservers have been changed when you obtained the domain and the pre-existing nameservers were not preserved?

Rgds

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messiah01

Thanks for the fast responses ! No I don't have a website for this domain planned yet, I have just put a different website online which is taking up a lot of time. But I am hoping to start this business in the next 4 months with a friend of mine. I checked out whoishostingthis and it is on gxnetworks so although when I go into my 123 acc it gives the standard name servers it seems that for whatever reason when I have reg the name it has somehow kept being directed to the old name servers.. despite being dropped for 2 months before hand!

Sorry I am new to this webdesign business when you say get the site structures should I just download all the html code? And then replace the content and images with some of mine + put it on my host.. when I move the host and redirect the nameservers is there a good chance I will lose my Google rank? I would like to know how many people are visiting the domain, perhaps old customers... is there anyway to do this with out it being on my host? I suppose I will have to bite the bullet and put it on my host + see what happens but I would just like to have as much chance of keeping the Google rank as possible. Appreciate the help!

golddiggerguy

No i mean try and get the structure of the site. Not important but e.g.

www.websitename.co.uk/about-us-insurance-guys
www.websitename.co.uk/contact-us-about-insurance

And then all the Titles, keywords, etc.

Give it 2 month and if no luck in performing well change to your own.

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cmrule

Could it be that you visited the website before the company dropped it? And therefore it is still saved in your cache??
Just a thought...

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messiah01

No it's definitely not in the cach. Gxnetworks where the site is hosted is the same host as (or run by) 123-reg so it looks like it was previously registered there and when I regged the domain 2 months after it dropped for whatever reason on their systems it has stayed hosted with the old nameservers in tact. Useful for ranking, thank you for all the input

crabfoot

Looks like the original owner has the site fees paid by direct debit, but they didn't have the same security on the domain!

Methinks they might be noting a websales drop soon ...

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