Shopping for Pre-Owned Domains

Tips for Purchasing Pre-Owned Domains - from Your Web Hosting Provider

Newer isn't always better. Take old domain names. That is, really take quality domains that are for sale or have expired and that suit your purposes.

The value of pre-owned domains

What old domains are worth to new owners is contingent on a variety of factors - web hosting provider explains.

PageRank

PageRank (PR) takes time to acquire, and a domain with a high PR won't keep that PR unless the back links and new content remain at the level needed for that PR. But when you start with a domain that has a good PR, you only need to work at keeping that PR, not at acquiring it.

Alexa rank

The importance of Alexa rank for a particular site depends on the purpose of the site. If people who care about Alexa rank will be advertising on the site, then a good Alexa rank is valuable.

The number and quality of back links

When you register a domain that has back links, those back links stay pointed to that domain until the webmasters discover that the site they linked to isn't there any more. If those links are from quality sites with good PR, the domain is even more valuable. To keep those back links longer, you'll need to make your content relevant to readers of the sites that link to the domain.

The age of the domain

Google, MSN, and probably other search engines weigh the age of a domain when determining the ranking for a site. Sites with new domains sometimes take months to appear in search results. Newer domains are more likely to be for spam sites, while older domains gain the trust factor more easily.

A good standing with all major search engines

The above factors will have less value if the domain is banned from any of the major search engines.

The relevance of the domain

A domain that scores high in every other way is useful only if it's relevant to the content you want on the site. A quality domain about gardening, for example, will quickly lose some of its current value if you use it for a site about any other content area.

Domain stages and registration dates

Domains go through a domain life cycle from availability through expiration, the redemption period, being deleted, and becoming available again.

The best time to acquire an old domain is when it's still registered and you purchase it from its current registrant. That way, the registration date ("created" date) for the domain remains the same even when the domain changes hands. However, the domain may cost more than if you were to get the same domain after it's been deleted.

Technically, you can't register an expiring domain, but you can snatch it up the instant it's been deleted (if someone else doesn't get it first). If you're fast enough, you can often keep the previous registration date. This is especially true if you register it via the same registrar that it was previously registered with.

Example: the domain name aftermarket site tdnam.com is owned by the domain name registrar GoDaddy. If you buy a domain through tdnam.com the instant it's been deleted, and that domain was previously registered through GoDaddy, the time that it was actually deleted was only milliseconds. Milliseconds aren't counted as time that the domain was deleted. However, if the same domain was previously registered through a different domain registrar, it will be deleted for seconds rather than milliseconds during that brief transaction period, and your chances of keeping the previous registration date are slimmer. There is no guarantee either way, but the first way increases the likelihood of your of keeping that previous registration date.

When you register a pre-owned domain that was deleted for more than a few seconds (and sometimes for less than that), the registration date will reset to the date that you register it. You don't get the benefits of an earlier registration date, but you still have the other benefits that an older domain can have.

How to research pre-owned domains

Before you register an existing domain, check for possible problems as well as for benefits. At Internet Archive, you can look up earlier versions of the site at that domain (if it was indexed by archive.org; not all sites and versions are). If it had content that search engines penalize, such as black hat SEO techniques, the domain may be banned from search engines. You'll be able to resubmit it to search engines, but if the domain has been banned, it may or may not be accepted again.

Numerous domain name services, both free and paid, list pending delete and deleted domains with details about each domain, for example:

• PageRank
• Alexa data
• Whether the domain is listed in DMOZ
• Amount of traffic
• The number of back links in each of the main search engines
• Time left until it's deleted (for domains pending delete)
• The number of bids on the domain

Some also have the ability to back order domains and to sort and search for domains by any of the above criteria and others, such as the number of characters or a specific string of characters in the domain.

Related blog articles

• How Good Is Your Domain Name?
• Domain Name Watch
• Domain Investing: The Next "Real Estate" Boom?
• Ranking Google PageRank
• Alexa Rank: What It Means and How to Increase It
• How to SEO Your Site Fast

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Web Site Domains: Master of Your Domain? You Should Be.

Your Domains Explained by Web Hosting Provider

There’s no argument among SEO professionals that optimization using widespread SEO tactics isn’t going to be as effective as these tactics once were. There was a time when a well-stuffed HTML keyword tag did the trick but spiders soon “figured out” how to spot overstuffed keyword tags. Same with title tags, alt tags, description tags and other coding elements that have been abused by the black and gray hat communities.

Your web hosting provider explains: search engine algorithms have become much more sophisticated, determining not only site content but the quality of that content – a highly subject determination even for logical, discerning humans, much less search engine spiders.

However, this hasn’t prevented attempts to subvert the search engine process. As algorithms become more complex, the means to circumvent the rules follow close behind. Today, search engine algorithms can spot deceptive practices at a glance so even attempting to “fool” spiders is a dangerous, short-sighted, potentially site-lethal activity.

To improve the impression your newly-launched site makes on search engines, consider your domain name, your domain registrar, your web host and other factors that build or corrode the trust of web site crawlers.

Naming Your Domain

If you haven’t picked a domain name yet, good. We’re not too late. If you have picked a domain name but haven’t built the site, you can always register a new, more potent domain name. And if the site is launched, up-and-running, consider the creation of a sub-domain.

Pick words related to your products or services. Play around and get creative, but remember, spiders register your domain name regardless of what name appears on the site skin. So, your domain name should tell spiders this is a hardware site not a porn site.

Also, when selecting a domain name, consider your business plan carefully. If you’re going global, try to get the dot com extension for your proposed domain name. It’s the world-wide standard in identifying a commercial site.

If you’re a local business reaching a local market, add your location to the domain, making things clearer to humans and to spiders. For example: cheapeatsmiami.com pretty much says it all for a site reviewing Miami restaurants. Right on the money.

Other examples: cpaogden.com, austincustomcakes.com and so on. A domain like this will help you show up on local searches, a search engine feature that’s become increasingly popular and profitable for small businesses targeting a local or regional demographic. Add it to the domain name.

Also, register the domain for two years or more through a reputable registrar. Better web hosting companies offer domain registration as a free service. The two-year commitment is a trust-building element between you and visiting spiders who know everything there is to know about your site – including how long you plan to stick around and whether you’re a domain squatter with thousands of domains registered and up for sale or auction.

Choosing a Domain Hosting Provider

Once your domain is registered, you need a web hosting company to provide a connection to the wild, wild web. Select a company that’s been around for 10 years or longer – a track record you can verify. A fly-by-night outfit can fly in the middle of the night, taking your site and your customer database with it.

Look for features. Lots of free software – a free site building package, a free shopping cart and checkout, free metrics analysis tools – everything you need to build and grow a web site to profitability should be included as part of the monthly web hosting fee. If you don’t get this long list of goodies, keep looking for a web hosting provider.

Also, you’re known by the company you keep so avoid hosts that accept any site for a buck. Scam sites, overseas drug companies, adult sites and other “unsavory” neighbors define your server-side neighborhood. It’s a question you want to ask the host’s rep before signing up for a 24-month stint. Your web host should be viewed as a partner in your endeavor so choose wisely when selecting a company to host that great domain you were able to snag.

Register Early. Register Often.

Search engine spiders may be mindless bots but they’ve got great memories. A spider comes to know your site inside out and vice-versa. A spider can identify a site’s launch date, the date the site was last spidered, what the site looked like when last spidered (cached view), who your host is, what your business is and on and on.

Register your domain name ASAP, even if the entire site isn’t up yet. It can take weeks and months to get spidered so the sooner your submit your site for consideration the better. Just make sure to identify pages under construction and prevent spiders from crawling and indexing new pages until they’re ready and tested.

Submit your domain to Google, Yahoo and MSN – the big three. But also submit your domain to smaller, more specialized search engines like Overture, Alexa, Ask and so on.

Important note coming up: There are literally thousands of search engines and registering with each one would take forever. So, site owners purchase search engine submission software to simplify the task through automation – automatic domain submissions to search engines.

Google won’t accept machine-submitted domains, and Yahoo charges for a SERPs listing. So, each submission should be “done by hand” to enhance chances of getting spidered, indexed and recognized faster by the biggest search engines.

To further encourage spiders to visit quickly, submit your site map through Google’s Webmaster Central. This awakens the sleeping giant, provides a site address, a domain name and a complete set of site links in the form of the site map. This is important because spiders are programmed to track links wherever they lead. The site map provides a road map of links spiders crawl ensuring faster, more complete and more accurate indexing.

Building the Trust of Spiders

Bots are a suspicious lot. They trust no one. They’re programmed to look for signs of deceit and deception on the part of a small segment of site owners who don’t play by the rules. If you’re spending a bunch of time trying to outwit spiders, put that time to better use by building credibility and trust of spiders.

Link to higher ranking sites that help search engine users. Links should be relevant to the site and to the visitors’ expectations. Encourage links exchanges and build your site’s links popularity.

Links popularity, you say? Yep. Web site owners are more likely to link to sites that offer good, solid, authoritative, unbiased information than sites that are nothing but hype and the hard sell. By adding good content and useful features (mortgage calculators, stock market feeds, live video feeds, etc.) a site increases links popularity, i.e. more one-way, in-bound links – a real trust-builder when it comes to spiders.

Non-reciprocal in-bound links indicate a site that other site owners are recommending to their visitors, asking nothing in return as is the case with a reciprocal link exchange between two topic-related sites (still good, but not as good as the one-way in-bound).

Avoid any SEM or SEO tactics that might even hint at an attempt to deceive visitors or bots. Put black text against a black background and it’s invisible to site visitors but spiders can see it, read it and assess its validity. There are lots of scams and schemes that algos now capture routinely. Play by the SE rules and always err on the side of caution when in doubt.

There’s a lot more to selecting a domain name than showing the world how clever you are. A domain name should be used to provide information about the site’s content and purpose.

The domain name should be registered through a reputable web host. Find a solid host that  registers domain names free, as part of monthly hosting fees. They’re out there.

Register the domain with the big three search engines as the site is being constructed. Make sure that pages under construction are designated “off limits” to spiders.

Invite spiders by submitting the domain name to search engines. Even better, submit a site map to make sure the site is crawled and indexed completely first time through.

Finally, build trustworthy relationships with spiders. Increase the number of links in general. Add useful, interesting content to increase the site’s links popularity and avoid even the whiff of scandal.

Master your domain. It may well be your future.

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Domain Hijacking: Who Registered Your Domain Name?

Web Hosting Provider Explains Domain Hijacking and How to Protect Your Domain

Wanna talk about headaches?

How’s this nightmare scenario: you register a domain name, build a big site, spend 425K to market the site, only to have the domain name (and all that goes with it) hijacked, as in, you don’t control your own digital property any more? Just a bad dream? Site owners, wake up. Your domain name can be hijacked. Bye-bye business.

Legal Hijacking

Happens all of the time. If you were smart enough to register JohnnyDepp.com for $2.95 and you’ve kept up your payments in hopes that it’ll someday pay off, some judge may simply hand Mr. Depp the domain name. And you, the legal, out-of-pocket owner of the URL are pounding sand.

True story. A farsighted visionary named John Vail registered ‘niagraregion.ca’ to dive traffic to his realty site. No biggie, right. Well, apparently it is a biggie. You see, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) forced Vail to hand over his legally registered name (and one he relied on to drive traffic to his main site, btw) to hand over his URL (and again, key marketing tool) to the Regional Municipality of Niagara, a bureaucracy that delivers water, housing, garbage pick-up and other services.

The site that John Vail legally registered and integrated into his marketing was arbitrarily handed over to a municipality, even though the URL was not specific to the municipality. It’s a fickle word, the W3, and things don’t always turn out in any way that makes sense.

Illegal Hijacking

Then, of course, there’s fraud (rampant), schemes, scams. Ponzi cons, MLM rip-offs, phony registries, international law and a  jerk who hijacked your domain name and all you know is that he’s in the Philippines. Dude, you are sunk. 

According to a report from SEDO [Edition 101], “Selling/and or buying domain names through an unsecure service provider [a new web hosting company] can leave you subject to fraud and domain hijacking - use an Established Web Hosting Provider.

Recently there has been a spate of incidents where a seller has in effect has his or her domain stolen when conducting business outside of a reputable marketplace.

The Scam

I decide to sell my highly successful (or just cool) domain name to you. You finance the transaction through PayPal using hacked or cracked accounts. You don’t know the account is a fraud, you sign all the papers and the “new owner” of “theresasuckerborneveryminute.com is long gone. You’ve signed over ownership of that name without receiving a rupee or a bat.

Your site, your business, oh yeah, your livelihood is now owned by some 16-year-old teen hacker in Nepal. And what are you going to do? Sue? Great, you win a yak in the settlement.

Is There No Protection for the Site Owner?

What do you think?

If I could highjack the Coke site, I wouldn’t be typing this now, but Coke pretty much has that red and white branding sewn up. It all comes down to which company you use to register your domain. Let your web hosting provider explain...

If you go with “Sleazy Steve’s Domain Registration and Adult DVD, Pty. Ltd” of Perth, Australia, that’s a domain name that can be accessed by anyone through Whois, the resource that provides all information on site ownership including telephone number company name, address, email addy – it’s all there for some con-puter hacker to transfer your site from its current server to a server in Istanbul. Bye-bye business. You’ll wake up one morning, log on to your web site and get a 404 error message.

There are a couple of things you can do to protect your domain from being usurped while you’re sleeping. First, good servers will notify you, the registered site owner before allowing any site to be removed from a server. Second, quality web hosts have protocols to follow whenever a web site is migrated.

Finally, you can “lock” your site with a good web host. That means no one can access the site, move it, sell it or auction off its links without your say so.

It Doesn’t Cost Any More And It’s Worth $48 a Year

The difference between low-ball (where not talking free web hosting which is something to avoid altogether) and quality web hosting adds up to $4.00 a month. Cheapie, low end hosts, that must cut security costs just to keep in business will nick you $2.95 a month for a basic shared hosting account.

A quality host, with layers of securities and layer upon layer of security will set you back $6.95 a month. We’re talking $4.00 a month! That’s the cost between a domain register who will protect your good name and one that doesn’t know you as long as you’re under a two-year garbage contract.

So, it’s pound foolish and penny-wise when you can buy business security for just $48 a year.

Think of it as low-cost insurance, and be sure to ask your web host what it does to protect domain hijacking.

And look out Coke. I’m watching you and your fancy logo.

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A Reputable Web Hosting Provider Can Help You To Protect Your Domain Name from Domain Slamming

It seems there are always people out to scam you.

Remember phone slamming? It  showed up in the late ‘90s. Without you even knowing it, your telephone carrier could be changed and you could be charged exorbitant fees. And there wasn’t anything you could do about it.

Phone Slamming

There were several variations of this scam going around. In one variation, the unknowing victim would receive a telephone call from his or her telephone company customer service rep. Problem was, it wasn’t really from their phone carriers. The call actually came from a “representative” of a competitive phone company.

These scammers would ask you for personal information, and once they had that personal information – BAM, they would change your telephone carrier from the one you’d signed up with, to their own company that had a completely new set of Terms of Service (TOS) and much higher prices in general. The victim wouldn’t even know that he’d changed telephone carriers. He didn’t give permission – he was slammed. And for a few years it was a very serious problem.

A variation on this theme was to send out real, negotiable checks – actual money in check form. If the receiver cashed the check (who wouldn’t?), they would be slammed, having their phone service switched without their permission and suddenly finding themselves paying astronomical rates to a brand new company. “What happened? And who’s “Bob’s Telephone Company, anyway?” You didn’t have to be big to get into the telephone slamming game because you bought line usage in bulk from the legitimate carriers and sold it at 10 or 20 times what you, the ‘telephone company’ paid for the bulk access to telephone lines.

Telephone slamming tended to make customers angry. It certainly wasn’t good for the economy. Consumers couldn’t trust their phone carriers, but the legitimate carriers weren’t all that interested in fixing the problem since they were selling bulk access by the ton – and making a lot of money by the ton.

So, laws were passed. Customers could contact their carriers and ask to have a “No Slamming” label put on their account so only the consumer could change carriers. And that pretty much ended the telephone slamming industry.

Fast forward a few years. There are no new ideas.

Instead, the bad guys are now slamming domains, moving them from one registrar to another without the knowledge of the domain owner. Surprised? Well, for many domain owners, all kinds of business and personal information is available in WHOIS, the official listing of domain owners: their addresses, company names, telephone numbers – it’s all there for the taking.

Here’s how the scam works.

Domain Slamming

Have you ever migrated your site from one web host to another? Sure, maybe several times as your site grew. It’s that way for a lot of on-line businesses and domain slammers know this.

So what they do is contact you by e-mail telling you that your domain registration is about to expire. Now mind you, this communication is from a scammer, but it looks and sounds legit. Who knows what happens once a registrar lists a new domain? Does that domain always stay with the same registrar? Many site owners wouldn’t have a clue.

The e-mail warns that if you don’t take immediate action, you’ll lose your domain name so, naturally, you respond. That’s what most of us do when we get something like that in our inboxes. The prospect of losing your domain name and your on-line venture is downright scary.

By responding to the bogus e-mail, you’re not just renewing your domain name. You’ve also been slammed and you now find your domain registrar is a completely different company from your original registrar. And how do these companies make money? Well, first they become your new registrar so they’re making money on the actual registration of your name. But, to add insult to injury, they totally boost your registration fees from $2.95 a year (some web hosts register domain names free) to $29.95. And this charge simply shows up on your credit card and there’s not a thing you can do about it. You’ve been slammed and scammed.

And now you’re partnering with a registrar/host that used outright fraud to get your account, so how well do you think they’re going to treat you as a hosting client? By falling for that bogus e-mail (snail mail or telephone call) from an unscrupulous registrar/host, you could be signing up for a three-year, no loophole contract charged to your credit card. You could be paying for services you don’t need and never asked for – at an additional charge, of course.

Other nightmarish scenarios? You log on and all of a sudden your site e-mail is “out of order.” Or, you might discover that your domain name has been hijacked and now points to a completely different site. In effect, you’re now invisible on the web.

Worse case scenario? The bad guys run the scam for a few months, transfer a few thousand accounts – often without site owners even knowing this – and one day the owners log on and their sites and the web host have disappeared altogether. Now, not only have site owners lost their web sites, they’ve also lost all of their customer and product information contained in the business databases.

Destroyed. Years of hard work down the drain – all because your domain was slammed and you got scammed.

How to Avoid Domain Slamming with the Help of a Reputable Web Hosting Provider

First, a domain is a “property.” With the help of a registrar, your domain is registered and you “own” it just like you own your car or house. And, on the web, digital property has value. It’s up to each site owner (domain registrant) to protect his or her own property since there’s virtually no “police” presence on the web. If you don’t watch out for what’s going on, who will?

Second, register with a reputable web host – one that has a track record you can see. It’s been in business for 10 years and you can’t find any complaints on webmaster blogs and forums. Go with a company that has a reputation for trustworthiness.

Third, don’t believe your e-mail – at least at face value. Sure, you might receive a notice from your legitimate registrar that your domain name is up for renewal. But how would you know it’s legit? Well, good  hosting companies have toll-free, customer support 24/7 so, pick up the telephone and ask a customer service representative if that e-mail is really from your registrar/host.

Finally, check your credit card charges. Have monthly fees increased without explanation? Is there a huge expense for the re-registration of your domain name? Is there a new company billing you? All good signs that your domain has been slammed.

It’s up to you to protect what’s yours – what you’ve paid for. And the best way to do that is to go with a reputable registrar – one interested in protecting your e-commerce property. One that will alert you if another company is trying to slam you. A company that will tag your account with a “Do Not Touch” sign to protect against scammers. And one that will automatically renew your domain so you don’t even have to think about it.

It’s not a new scam. In fact, it’s an old one, just updated to on-line technology. So, watch yourself and keep track of who your registrar is. And, if you even suspect that someone is trying to slam your domain, contact your registrar immediately.

Disappearing Domains?

How’s this for a nightmare scenario:

You take the plunge, register a domain and begin your on-line business. You work hard  and you’re finally starting to see a profit. Then one day, you log on and your site has disappeared! What happened? What happened to all of your hard work? It could be as simple as a clerical error or technical glitch, or it could be that you’ve registered your domain with a low-ball registrar. Think it can’t happen to you? One of the leading web hosts and domain registrars recently removed a client website for an on-line security agency from one of its server. Gone. The website (and the business) had been deleted.

And if it happens to you what have you lost? Much more than just your website. You also lose access to your site’s databases – databases filled with invaluable customer information. You also lose inbound links, critical to higher page rank. Even worse, you disappear from search engines altogether. You can see how this nightmare can go on to the point where you’ve lost it all – and who knows where your web host is. Maybe he graduated from high school.

There are lots of horror stories about deleted domains (not with our company, of course) – websites that have been zapped simply because the owners forgot to pay the annual domain registration fee, for instance. If you’re the forgetful type, you don’t want to work with a host that deletes your livelihood over a $4.95 charge – but it’s happened.

What are the domain registrar’s responsibilities?

There is some law and order on the W3. A consortium called ICANN oversees the relationships between web hosts and site owners. You can access the agency’s rules and regs on-line to see what your “legal” options are when you encounter a problem with your web host. Any reliable hosting company is going to adhere to ICANN guidelines. Look for some kind of sign that a potential web host is ICANN-savvy.

Next, before you sign up for an expensive, long-term subscription for hosting services, read the TOS – the Terms of Service. And not just the big text, either. Before you sign up with any web host, read the entire TOS – even the finest of fine print. Know how a given host deals with deleted accounts and what steps the hosting company takes to provide access to databases and other critical information if your domain is deleted, and what steps it takes to rectify the problem if technically feasible. All of this will be laid out in the TOS. Read it very, very carefully.

 However, if you’re reaching for a copy of your host’s TOS, chances are you already have a problem and you’re looking for the host’s contractually-binding responsibilities. So, even if you’ve been zapped contrary to ICANN guidelines or even the TOS of your web host, there’s not much you can do about it. It would cost much more to litigate and even then, getting payment is going to be difficult if not impossible. (And don’t think the unscrupulous web hosts don’t know this. They count on it!)

It all comes down to the way web hosts treat their clients and fulfill the legal requirements of a client subscription. Some web hosts operate out of a spare bedroom (or even a closet) and just don’t have the time to oversee simple, administrative chores like automatic domain renewal for their clients. If you’re working with an unreliable or uninvolved hosting company, you may get deleted, along with an auto-responder in your inbox.

On the other hand, working with an engaged web host – one that provides the tools you need to build a site to success – eliminates a lot of uncertainty and sleepless nights. It’s all about the quality of the hosting services you receive.

The quality of hosting

How do you know your site won’t be vaporized overnight without so much as a heads up from your hosting company? Fly-by-night web hosts disappear all of the time, taking with them their subscribers’ money and all of that hard work. It’s a fact, not all web hosts provide the same level of service, or the range of services, that better web hosts do. That’s why it pays to shop around.

As you’re comparison shopping look for signs of reliability. Does the host’s site look good? Is the text professionally written or is it just some kid working out of his dorm room hosting a few hundred clients on a shared server? It doesn’t take much to call yourself a web host. A small investment in server hardware, administration software and the ability to take credit card payments are about all you need to call yourself a web host company.

However, it takes much more to call yourself a good web host. Think of your web host as a silent but critical partner in your on-line endeavor because, in fact, that’s just what a web host is. Why? Because if you lose access to the world wide web, you lose access to your customers or clients and you aren’t making any sales during downtime. So you want reliability – even if it costs a few bucks more each year.

What are the “signs” of quality web hosting?

Does the host offer an automatic renewal service? If it does, it’s a sign that the host is involved in the success of its clients.

Does the site display any logos – the ICANN logo, the on-line Better Business Bureau or some other affiliation that instills confidence? Look. Ask.

Are the TOS clear, simple and straight up? It’s in the best interests of a quality hosting company that clients not have any misunderstandings before buying hosting services.

Does the host offer 24/7, US-based tech support? If your site has suddenly disappeared you want to talk to someone who can fix the problem – now!

You also want to look for a host that’s been around for a while. Now, this is no guarantee that your site won’t be deleted for some infraction (or for no reason at all). The nightmare scenario described above involved a huge domain registrar with a long-time, web presence.

Is the web host involved in the success of its clients? The good ones are because it’s easier to keep a client than find a new one so quality web hosts build their client bases by delivering quality services, near-perfect uptime, tools and applications required to build and launch a website and grow it to profitability. The more freebies a web host offers the better. That’s a great measurement of how the web host sees its responsibility in your partnership.

So, scour the blogs, read the reviews and visit each potential web host’s site for a thorough evaluation. Read the TOS agreement from top to bottom so you understand just what you’re getting and for how long. Finally, look for a web host that wants to partner with you for mutual success.

Websites will still disappear and the horror stories will continue to make the rounds on the web. But if you go with a hosting company that delivers, has a track record and a commitment to your site’s success, the likelihood that your site will be deleted are greatly diminished.