Why You Need to Keep Your Domain Records Up-to-date
Reading Time: 4 minutes 
Why? So You Don’t Lose Everything…
I’ve lost count of how many clients have lost domains over the years because they didn’t keep their domain records up to date. So, if you have a website using that domain, it’s essentially offline.
So I tried finding some stats, and all I could find was that in 2018, 130,656 GoDaddy customers had to pay to recover domains they lost due to inaccurate records, including 402,671 domains. Imagine what that number is today.
Yes, your website files will still be on your hosting server, but you are as good as invisible without a domain name to display them. You’ll then need to get a new domain, install it on the server, and update the database, including any links in your content, to use the new domain.
Then comes the marketing nightmare of changing everything from the old domain to reflect the new one. Social links, incoming website links, business cards, and offline collateral. And, yes, your SEO rankings will suffer.
You also have to hope a competitor doesn’t snatch your expired domain. Or worse, someone with a different focus will use your name recognition to get traffic to their new, unrelated site. For instance, one client lost their domain, and the website became adult content. Yikes!
Do you have any recourse?
If you don’t have a trademark, you’ll have difficulty recovering that domain. And if you are trademarked, here come the legal fees to help you accomplish this task.
How can this happen?
- The email address on the domain record is no longer valid.
- Payment information in your account is no longer valid.
- Customers do not receive the numerous emails that domain registrars send warnings of 1 and 2. (Or they do and ignore them.)
- The email address on the record is not yours, the domain owner. It is a consultant or developer. If you are no longer working with that web dev, they are unlikely to let you know that your domain account needs attention.
About #4. You should always have your name and email address as the “Registrant” on your domain records. There is no good reason for your information to be on that record as the Registrant. Period. That makes you the legal owner of your domain. If your consultant or web designer is noted as the Registrant, they legally own your domain — not you.
If you want someone to help you with your domains, they should be noted as the Technical contact. Not the Registrant. Professional consultants, web devs, and designers know this and would never consider registering their own domains as the Registrant.
No Email Notices?
I know that not all email notices sent by Registrars, such as GoDaddy, are received. I’ve experienced this myself. However, you can help ensure you receive all your emails by adding Senders to your approved senders list or whitelist. You can find out how to do that here.
You also need to be aware that some emails may be misidentified as spam or junk. Happens all the time. However, before you delete the contents of your junk or spam folders, check whether an email was sent to those folders in error.
Mark those emails as not junk and move them to your inbox. Most email programs are set to “learn” whether an email is spam. Making these efforts will help prevent duplicate emails from landing in the junk folder again.
Also, take a moment to give your Trash folder a once-over before emptying it, too, just in case you accidentally deleted an email that you want to keep. I know I’ve done this as I page through the tons of emails in my inbox, my cursor hovering over the delete button. You might be surprised to find out how often that happens.
Mark Your Calendar
The best way to avoid losing your domain name is to mark your calendar to keep your domain records up to date. Look up your domain’s expiration date and mark your calendar 8 weeks before it to double-check that all your info is accurate.
If you have a ton of domains, as I do, check everything once a month. I mark my calendar for mid-month each month to check my domains. While I know my contact and payment information hasn’t changed and is accurate, I use this to review my overall portfolio.
Your domain records are your responsibility to keep up to date—not the registrars, not your web helpers or consultants, but you.
Why not check your domains now to ensure you are the Registrant and that your email and payment information are up to date? If they are not, you’ll be glad you did.
At your service,
