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Ask HN: changing my site's domain name

12 pointsraghus14 comments

I have foo.com and Foo Inc. wants me to change it to phoo.com because of a trademark infringement. I want to go ahead and do it. Have any of you had to change a domain name on an existing site? What's the cleanest way to do it? A cheatsheet or any list of gotchas would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

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Easy and 1st: 301 redirects for as long as you can. Negotiate!

Medium later: A link somewhere on the page saying, for some period of time: "Dear visitor, were you looking for oldfoo? Click here."

Harder and even later: Check the referer to see if they were coming for the old content

Trademarks are per area of commerce, not absolute.

McDonalds can stop you from running a McDonald's Hotdog Shop, but they can't stop you from running McDonald's Plumbing.

Before you capitulate - is Foo a very obscure word, or is it fairly common?

Are you blatantly cybersquatting?

Are you using the site for anything?

If so, is you area of commerce overlapping with Foo Inc.'s?

Is Foo Inc. willing to buy the domain off you?

Yes there is overlap and I'd like to go ahead and change it. I guess I should clarify that I am looking for the technical mechanics of going about doing this as efficiently as possible.

Other than the usual?

-Buy new domain

-Point new domain at server

-Notify users of the change

-Surrender old domain

I've never dealt with this sort of thing before, but I'm not aware of special mechanics for the situation.

Are they asking you to give them foo.com? Or just not use it as your domain/company name. Negotiate to keep it and setup terms that you'll phase it out and make it clear that it's not associated with Foo, inc.

If your site relies on traffic from search engines I would recommend using 302 redirects (temporary redirect) for some time. When the search engines have updated their results to show your new domain switch to 301 redirect.

The reason you don't want to jump right on 301 is that your old results will probably fall off immediately.

At one time using 302's was a suspicious sign in the eyes of the search engines, but that is no longer a problem.

Search your site for absolute links to your own content (http://foo.com/something) and change them to relative links (/something) before you do anything w/ the domain.

If they are big, and you are legit, make them pay for it. You can probably get $15k for it. OTOH if they are small or just plain nice, give it to them, esp. if it is not a big money maker for you.

In the pre-Internet days my company name was a registered trademark and we leaned on another another to change their company name. They did. My unlawerly opinion is that a (tm) isnt worth spit, but(R) has some real meat behind it.

15K for a 3 letter domain? That doesn't sound right

foo is a variable, no?

not right as in should be more, or less?

I recently inquired for the cost of a particular four-letter domain (an english word) and was quoted $25k.

I didn't buy it :-)

Assuming that Foo Inc. has not presented any demands as to when you have to cease control over foo.com, what you want to do is to set up a HTTP 301 redirect to your new domain phoo.com and leave it indefinitely. Human traffic will probably adapt to the new domain relatively quick, but search engines can take a while to update all instances of foo -> phoo even though 301 means "permanently moved".

Great domain name first of all.

Could you not maybe use an extension e.g foopeoplesearch.com or thefoosearch.com for the moment. Build an audience and then possibly fight to use foo.com?

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