One of my clients, with whom I had been working for about 20 years, suddenly went belly up. It was so sudden that they didn’t communicate anything to the providers, and the employees were released very abruptly. When I found out, I contacted my former contact there, the manager, to confirm what had happened. I then proceeded with deactivating the website.
That contact found a similar position with a competitor. As the website I created had a fairly good ranking in Google Search (top 5 results), he sort of asked if I could redirect this traffic to the company website he is now working for.
I’m not entirely comfortable with this, to say the least.
I’d tell him the traffic is an asset of the old company, and unless he has something in writing from the owners of that defunct company stating their agreement, it’s not your place to make such a decision. IMO you’re being asked to participate in theft.
The manager needs to very carefully look at his employment agreements before taking any asset from the company to another - even if it’s gone “belly up”, the intellectual property rights exist with the owners, and they can come after you if necessary. Until the checks dry up, and the company (not just an ex-employee) actually makes their website nonfunctional, the site, and its traffic, is still an asset.
Although I don’t know if it could be proven legally, I think so too.
I took down the website because they hadn’t paid their outstanding bill. We found out they were no longer in business by tracking down the manager’s secretary, and I then confirmed this with the manager directly. That is when this comment was made.
If by “manager” you mean “the owner of the company”, then i’d go for it.
If by “manager” you mean “a mid-management person who reported to upper management/CEO”… the CEO could wake up tomorrow, realize they had a very traffic-heavy site, pay a delinquent bill, and expect their site that they own to be theirs to control.
What I know is that he was running the show and reporting to the owner, who has several businesses.
The owner is also the titular holder of the domain name and controls it.
So, practically, the owner can do whatever he wants on his own.
And if that manager comes back to me I’ll try to contact the owner before doing anything.
If the business owner owns the domain, then it’s onone else’s bussiness to do anything with that domain.
If he lets the domain expire or decides to sell it, well the other company may buy it and utilise it.
Though I’m no legal expert, I guess that’s how it works.
I saw something like this recently at work. A well established competitor in the same retail sector went “belly up” a year or two back. Their eCommerce website remained in place afterward, though without any stock to buy.
Then just recently a new site belonging to a new owner/company has appeared at the same domain. I assume the owner of the old company/website sold the domain as an established site.