Don't let your old domain lapse
Your old domain is still live, still findable, and still your problem. It costs £10 a year to protect; the alternative is more expensive.
You rebranded, congratulations. Did you renew the old domain?
Most founders don't; they update the website, print new business cards, and move on. The old domain gets forgotten, and by the time someone notices, it's already gone.
A competitor registers it, or a bad actor does; either way, anyone who still has your old URL bookmarked ends up somewhere you didn't put them, and the SEO authority you spent years building flows to whoever bought it: every backlink, citation, and press mention. If it's a bad actor, they can send email from your old domain name — your clients receive a message that looks, from a glance at the sender address, like it came from you.
The cost of neglect
Domain renewal runs about £10 a year. Recovering a lapsed domain starts at hundreds and can reach thousands: premium domain brokers charge a percentage of whatever they negotiate, and registrars that catch valuable drops set their own floor prices. And if the domain has only been gone a few days, you may find a registrar already holding it at a premium.
If the domain has been picked up by a bad actor, there's no clean legal route; you can demonstrate prior use and file a dispute with the relevant registry body. You may win, but you'll spend time and money you didn't plan for.
What to do
When you rebrand, add the old domain to a permanent renewal list; set it to auto-renew and point it to your new site with a 301 redirect, which preserves the SEO you've built and stops traffic landing somewhere unexpected.
The same logic applies to any domain you've ever owned: other trading names, early brand experiments, project names that didn't go anywhere. A registrar sweep takes ten minutes; a recovery process takes weeks.
Nobody usually owns this task: it's not IT's job, it's not marketing's job, and it doesn't feel urgent until it is. Put it in someone's name and check once a year that auto-renew is still active and the payment card is valid.
If your domain list is longer than your memory, an audit is a good starting point.
Robin Carswell
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