Hijacked domain (not)
domain, internet April 16th, 2008So, I’ve changed my nameservers on my domain to point to my new host and granted it takes time to propagate, but after a good few hours, peteralewis.com is active and pointing to my new host.
Almost.
www.peteralewis.com (with the www) gets redirected to searchportal.information.com (also related to spi.domainsponsor.com). After a quick search it appears this is common and people start blaming Google, IE, spyware and ISPs for redirecting domains that can’t be found to these websites.
I use Fasthosts for my domains and this site is currently hosted with Dreamhost - I’ve no idea if one of these are responsible, my previous host (hostgator) or some higher management of domains.
But the reason it’s occurring is that the domain hasn’t fully propagated throughout the internet. Low and behold around 18 hours from setting up the new nameservers, the www. address points to the correct place.
Problem solved, although it would be good to know why the address without the www worked straight away…
2 Responses to “Hijacked domain (not)”
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July 17th, 2008 at 5:34 am
Peter I am glad I found this post. I have been dealing with the exact same issue. Site shows up without the WWW and with it only works sometimes. My hosting is with hostgator, so ????? who knows. Researching the companies behind information.com sure does make them look guilty of something!!! If it is the domains not propogationg yet how does searchportal.information.com get to be the site that always shows up?
July 17th, 2008 at 11:15 am
It’s a bit scary when you here about people’s domains being stolen and hijacked when unreleased or transferred from a host, hence why I was initially running around like a scared rabbit on first seeing it!
Services such as searchportal.information.com etc, base their revenue systems on getting click throughs to whatever is listed on the page. I’ve read elsewhere that some hosting companies sign-up to this type of service to get redirects sent to domains they no longer have (have expired or been moved). Therefore they can get a small amount of revenue. When you’re a hosting company, you may have hundreds of domains like this at any one time, so therefore the “dead link” may make some money.
Personally I think it’s a cheap shot and would prefer the company to be more professional and show a branded page…
I’m guessing that the domain without the “www” is a server side setting, which under normal circumstances would use some url re-write magic to show your normal site. And because this is handled by the server/host and not domain name lookups, the old host automatically re-routes to the correct (new) IP address. Whereas the full domain with the www is no longer with the host and is awaiting propagation.
All confusing magic flying through the air!