NDGCA.COM is active again

[N0SND-Frank]

As some of you may be aware, the NDGCA.COM domain expired in December. The domain was just released back into the domain pool after the redemption period expired and I was able to register it for one year for a total cost of $3.13. I am considering this a donation to the association and do not expect reimbursement. We will discuss whether we want to keep the domain at the board level as it would be another $8 to $15 per year to keep it registered to the association depending on where we register it.

Currently I have it pointing to the NDGCA.ORG website.

[Trycacheus]

I don't know much about this, but is there a reason we would want to keep the NDGCA.COM registered?

[N0SND-Frank]

The main reason I registered the .com is there is still a lot of old links that point to the old web site in peoples profiles, search engine results, and in various forums in old postings. At least this way with the permanent redirect that is now in place, if they click the link it goes to our web site versus returning a not found error, a broken graphic, or worse, going to web site that completed unrelated.As part of the process, I am going to attempt to collect some statistics on how much traffic we receive using the old domain name which should help us determine the value of keeping it. We also need to determine whether it is worth it for the NDGCA "brand" to keep both domains active.

[Trycacheus]

That makes sense to me, that is why you are our tech guy.

[eyeinthesky]

I am going through this same thing with another organization. The question we were asked is "when you search which do you most often use, dot com or do org? We are taking a poll of the visitors to the web site. I will share with you what we find out .

[N0SND-Frank]

It would be interesting to see what they find out from their survey.

Here is what I find interesting, if you search for NDGCA using Google, the top results all point the old .com site, but if you search for North Dakota Geocaching Association, the top results point to the new .org site. Hopefully, Google and the other search engines will start picking up the permanent redirect and make the .org the top results for NDGCA.

I am seeing a lot of the "I'm a member of the ndgca" logo request coming in for geocaching.com via ndgca.com, so people are still using the old web address in their profiles.