Update Nameservers After a Transfer

I’ve been consolidating my domain names at one registrar. It makes management of the domain names easier, and I have less work tracking down renewals, sales listings, and parked pages.

On some of my domain names, I have forwarding enabled. Instead of parking some of my domain names that don’t earn much revenue, I forward them directly to a “for sale” landing page to help drive sales. Typically, I use the registrar’s default nameservers and add a forward / redirect because that is the easiest way to set up forwarding.

When a domain name is transferred, it should retain its nameservers. Parked domain names set up using the parking company’s nameservers should continue to resolve to the parked page after a domain name transfer.

For domain names that use a registrar’s nameservers and forward elsewhere, the forwarding will not continue once the domain name is transferred, unless the nameservers are updated. For example, if I am using the eNom nameservers to forward one of my domain names to an Embrace.com landing page, and I transfer that domain name to GoDaddy, I will need to update the nameservers to GoDaddy’s default nameservers to continue with the forwarding.

While looking through my portfolio at GoDaddy this week, I noticed two domain names I transferred earlier this year that have the default nameservers of the former registrar listed. I tested the domain names to see if they still forwarded, and neither did. Time to update the nameservers.

For people with large portfolios, most registrars allow customers to download a list of their domain name portfolio. When doing this, be sure to have the nameservers listed. Sort the list in ABC order by nameserver and highlight the domain names that are pointed at the former registrar’s servers. Update all of these nameservers and re-enable forwarding.