subject: What Does The Pending Delete Status On A Domain Mean? [print this page] What does the Pending Delete status on a domain name mean?
When an individual purchases a domain name and then have it expire or forgets about the renewal, it is often put through an auction prior to the registrar they first paid for the domain's registration at releases it back to the the registry they got it from. Once with the registry, they generally will hold it for some time. Depending on the domain name's extention, time can differ on how long it waits with the registry. This all is set by the registry though, they can carry the domain name for a good amount of time.
Commonly with .com and .net names you will find that Verisign keeps the domain name for some time and then releases it publically roughly 90 days after the domain name's expiry date.
Commonly within 5 days of being released, Verisign will label the domain as "Pending Delete".
A couple things to think about with pending delete domains.
Most domain names registered after the pending delete period will keep little to no pagerank because they have been sitting for 90 days with tons of 404 results from any existing backlinks.
Pending Delete names should be bought for their brandability, desire to develop, and nothing else.
More common than not domains that had previous page rank from Google will be targetted by domain investors to try and either make a fast buck off of.
Typically this is assisted directly with the use of a drop catching script. Our Phoenix Web Design company catches all our pending delete domain names through the use of custom scripts that we have developed
Most keyword domain names are picked up in aution houses like TDNAM, Sedo, Namejet and Snapnames, but often some higher end keyword domains get sent directly to the registry to sit it out and/or go through auction without being bid on. When filtering through loads of premium domains we use Namesaurus to get a quick pre-filtered geo+business.com or .net list is usually very resourceful in helping our clients compete for desirable keywords.
Some keypoints to realize with pending delete domains can be they generally have little to none pagerank from Google left after the 90 days of expiring and presenting a 404 error page or parked page with the registrar when Google crawls the domain. If the domain name is right for you though, it is still worth it to lock up.
We are most active on Geographical themed domain names because of their direct market.
It is super easy to find powerful domains using the websites on the internet.
