If you are a regular reader of The Hot Iron you may know I am reading through all of the books on my bookshelf, blogging my takeaways from them, and passing the books along to friends and colleagues. One book I just finished is Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink, published in 2001. Look for my takeaways on this great book soon.

At the end of the book it mentions the Web site for the book at freeagentnation.com. So I entered the address into my browser and it resolves to nothing, no Web site. Daniel Pink has a Web site for himself and one of his most recent books, Johnny Bunko. According to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, the last pages of freeagentnation.com archived were on November, 2005, and it was a link to his personal Web site.

This surprises me, especially as the book is probably still sitting on the bookshelves of many entrepreneurs and in circulation. I am glad to see at least he still owns the domain name.

Web sites can and do have a shelf life, and taking it down can be the right move. However people still may be seeking the site or its topic. Routing Web traffic to another site at a minimum is straightforward and can suit those looking for the Web site, and maintain value for the topic as well as the domain name.

Technology • (4) Comments • Permalink