Reselling Domain Names and Websites

Recovering Value from Domain Names and Websites

Websites take time, effort and money to develop and with the numbers of companies fighting for Google rankings with Search Engine Optimisation service companies means that an established website can be worth a lot of new business to competition. One of the ways Google and friends tells the real companies from false 'SEO landing' pages is by how long the domain name has been registered - fronts to catch internet business tend to have a short shelf life - and so the domain name and website of a company can provide valuable leads to any company.

First of all it is important to note that domain names are essentially just road signs that point you to an internet address.

If you click http://216.58.210.14 you still get to google.com, the domain name google.com just points you at the 216.58.210.14 address.

Therefore when a domain name is sold it is simply the road sign that is being transfered to a new owner, which they can then point at any internet resource or website they wish.

When you buy a domain name you buy that domain name from a domain registrar and you become the domain registrant. This usually entitles you to administer the website using the domain registrars web portal. Here you can select where the domain will point - i.e. at what website the domain name will take you to when you type the domain name into your browser.

You can also set the domain contacts which are the registered agents that help you control your domain. When you set-up contacts for a domain you would enter details similar to those below:

The domains names are registered as follows:

Registrant Name: First-Name Surname
Registrant Organization: Company Name
Registrant Street: 1st Line Address
Registrant City: Town or City
Registrant State/Province: County
Registrant Postal Code: Postcode
Registrant Country: GB
Registrant Phone: +44.000 000 0000

These details have been looked-up using something called a WHOIS which interrogates the servers on the web and displays the relevant contacts for that domain.

The registrant is the actual owner of the website as officially recognised by Nominet who are the .uk name registry here in the UK, founded in 1996.

The Nominet website WHOIS lookup. is showing us that the registrant name is Simon Cooper and that the domain belongs to sircles.net Ltd. The registrants address is given as well as some other details.

Along with the registrant is also the admin contact and the technical contact. The admin contact may often be the technical department who administer the domain on behalf of the owner and the technical contact will often be the domain registrar whose details are held as a party to contact in case of loss of service.

The admin contact is the vital contact to have control of when transferring a domain name. If you have access to the admin contact email address you can recover the password for the web portal and point that domain name wherever you wish.

On some domain registrar portals you can also change the registrants details and so change ownership of the domain

When we are looking into which domains are owned by insolvent companies the registrant and the admin contact are of vital importance and are the defining factor in deciding who or what rightfully owns a domain.