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 telephone callers from the competitors telephone number to your own number.

This is the same with domains - if a domain expires it can be re-registered and set up so that anybody that enters the expired domain into their internet browser would automatically get re-directed to your website. The increase in visitor numbers for such a simple procedure can make researching expired domains very worthwhile, and quite possibly very lucrative.

So you can see that some expired domains can become very valuable for the relevant companies. Those domains that have a high number of visitors, and matching products, can become very sought after.

A whole new market has opened up dealing in domains. The better known part of the domain market doesn't deal so much with expired domains, but high value domains in their own right, such as business.com, or sex.com. These domains rarely become available, and when they do the prices make them out of reach for most people.

A lesser known part of the domain market deals in expired domains. If you can find a domain that's about to expire, and the domain receives lots of visitors, then you can try to re-register it. Once you have successfully registered the expired domain you will have several options - you could place adverts on that domain, or you could build a new website on that domain, or you could offer it for sale. As mentioned above, some companies may be willing to pay a lot of money for a matching domain that will complement their website.

I hope this article has helped explain the significance of expired names. If you are interested in finding out more, there are several sources of information on expiring domains on the internet. After all, the internet is based on domains. The website DomDat.com lists the important information about upcoming expiring domains, and has an alert service so you can be informed when a suitable domain is about to expire. You should take some time to look and see what's on offer - expired domains could prove to be very lucrative for you.