NordVPN Promotion

Home / Blogs

My Domain Reputation Is Bad, Should I Get a New Domain?

Many companies have the occasional “oops” where they send email they probably shouldn’t have. This can often cause a decrease in reputation and subsequent delivery problems. Some companies rush to fix things by changing domains.

Brand new domains, those registered less than 30 days, have really bad reputations. Blame the spammers and scammers who exploited a loophole and sent tons of untraceable spam from newly registered domains that they then abandoned without paying for them. So unless you have a domain waiting in the wings you’re not going to improve your reputation by switching.

Even if you do have a registered but unused domain in your back pocket, moving to that domain isn’t going to help. These days, domains need to be warmed just like IPs do. Depending on where you’re mailing, warmup can take 4 – 6 weeks to accomplish. Domains need to be warmed even if you’re putting them on currently warmed IPs.

Fundamentally, it’s easier to rebuild a domain reputation than it is to warm up a new domain. This is especially true when the reputation destroying incident is a one-time or short term thing. For instance, sometimes a company will need to send a legal notice to their whole database. This may hurt the overall domain reputation in the short term. However, if there’s a history of good mail and the sends quickly return to that good place, then reputation won’t be damaged over the long term.

Companies that panic and switch domains are stuck warming up for weeks. They don’t have the history behind them that compensates for short term problems.

Even in the cases where there have been ongoing and long term problems, filters will often adapt faster to good practices on an established domain than they will to good practices on a new domain.

Changing domains is (almost) never the solutions to domain reputation problems.

NORDVPN DISCOUNT - CircleID x NordVPN
Get NordVPN  [74% +3 extra months, from $2.99/month]
By Laura Atkins, Founding partner of anti-spam consultancy & software firm Word to the Wise

Filed Under

Comments

TL;DR: the answer is No. DJ Chuang  –  Mar 15, 2019 6:03 PM

For those scanning-type readers who like bullet points, the answer is NO.

Thank you for taking the time to explain the rationale and context for why “Changing domains is (almost) never the solutions to domain reputation problems.”

Now, if you have the time, it’d be of interest to some to hear more about when changing domains is a solution to domain reputation problems, since you did adeptly add the parenthetical (almost) in your conclusion. :)

[disclaimer]

Comment Title:

  Notify me of follow-up comments

We encourage you to post comments and engage in discussions that advance this post through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can report it using the link at the end of each comment. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of CircleID. For more information on our comment policy, see Codes of Conduct.

CircleID Newsletter The Weekly Wrap

More and more professionals are choosing to publish critical posts on CircleID from all corners of the Internet industry. If you find it hard to keep up daily, consider subscribing to our weekly digest. We will provide you a convenient summary report once a week sent directly to your inbox. It's a quick and easy read.

Related

Topics

IPv4 Markets

Sponsored byIPv4.Global

Domain Names

Sponsored byVerisign

New TLDs

Sponsored byRadix

Cybersecurity

Sponsored byVerisign

Brand Protection

Sponsored byCSC

DNS

Sponsored byDNIB.com

Threat Intelligence

Sponsored byWhoisXML API

NordVPN Promotion