To understand expired domains, and their significance, an understanding of the difference between a domain and a website is required.
A good analogy is to liken a domain to a company telephone number, and a website to a company office. People can use a telephone to enter a company telephone number to call up the company and place orders, in the same way that they can use an internet browser to enter a domain to look at the company website and place orders.
With the telephone, the company pays the telephone company. If they don’t pay then their telephone gets cut off, and after a while their phone number gets reassigned.
This is similar to domain names. A company will pay to register a domain for a specific period of time – normally 1 or 2 years. The company can then pay again to renew the registration for another set period. If the company stops paying, then the domain expires and becomes available to be registered by anyone else.
Imagine you owned a company where telephone orders were an important part of your business. Now imagine one of your local competition goes out of business – your orders would jump if you could divert the...