--- title: Never Buy A .online Domain | daily.dev description: A developer shares a cautionary tale about registering a free .online TLD from Namecheap for a small project. Weeks later, the domain was flagged by Google... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/never-buy-a-online-domain-cmwrcnll5 twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Never Buy A .online Domain | daily.dev og:description: A developer shares a cautionary tale about registering a free .online TLD from Namecheap for a small project. Weeks later, the domain was flagged by Google... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/never-buy-a-online-domain-cmwrcnll5 og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/cMWRCnLl5.png og:image:alt: Never Buy A .online Domain og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Never Buy A .online Domain **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 5 min read · 33 upvotes · 7 comments ## Summary A developer shares a cautionary tale about registering a free .online TLD from Namecheap for a small project. Weeks later, the domain was flagged by Google Safe Browsing and placed on serverHold by the registry (Radix) with no notification. This created a catch-22: Google requires domain verification via DNS to remove the blacklist flag, but the registry won't lift the serverHold until Google removes the flag, and DNS doesn't resolve while on serverHold. The post concludes with lessons learned: stick to .com, add domains to Google Search Console immediately, and set up uptime monitoring even for simple landing pages. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@coppnic** · 12 upvotes > That's the most wildest take on TLD I've heard in years, suggesting only .com is a valid standard while hundrets of gTLD, ccTLD and nTLD are officially recognized by ICANN. > > No company, especially not US companies, should have power over restricting official standards that would affect milions of humans world wide. **@akkitto** · 9 upvotes > "stick to .com" is not a solution. At most, it's a temporary workaround. That's like saying, stick to horse carriages, when the city you live in is so old, they do not deal well with your otherwise perfectly normal car. **@pozda** · 6 upvotes > I had .rocks, .surf, .space, .digital and .what-not domains with namecheap and never got issues with them > > also this: > > "Buying a weird TLD. .com is the gold standard. I'm never buying anything else again. Once bitten and all that." > > is just plain wrong, basically saying " i drank water from poisoned well once, so I am not drinking water in general for the rest of my life!" ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [How my side project got banned from the internet](https://daily.dev/posts/how-my-side-project-got-banned-from-the-internet-1fmhlalc6) · Lobsters · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Google Safe Browsing incident](https://daily.dev/posts/google-safe-browsing-incident-txwfsh2lo) · Hacker News · 2 upvotes · 1 comments - [The purpose of DNS is to spread scams](https://daily.dev/posts/the-purpose-of-dns-is-to-spread-scams-9kvenwh8e) · Terence Eden · 1 upvotes · 0 comments - [GoDaddy warns India's fake-site crackdown could backfire](https://daily.dev/posts/godaddy-warns-india-s-fake-site-crackdown-could-backfire-4zl5rhn1r) · The Next Web · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#cloudflare](https://daily.dev/tags/cloudflare), [#dns](https://daily.dev/tags/dns), [#infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/infrastructure) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/never-buy-a-online-domain-cmwrcnll5) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Never Buy A .online Domain","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/never-buy-a-online-domain-cmwrcnll5","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/never-buy-a-online-domain-cmwrcnll5"},"datePublished":"2026-02-25T14:14:54.027Z","dateModified":"2026-04-02T02:12:56.469Z","description":"A developer shares a cautionary tale about registering a free .online TLD from Namecheap for a small project. 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At most, it’s a temporary workaround. That’s like saying, stick to horse carriages, when the city you live in is so old, they do not deal well with your otherwise perfectly normal car.","datePublished":"2026-02-26T13:15:16.148Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/cMWRCnLl5#c-te7LAOIKC","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Daniel","url":"https://daily.dev/akkitto","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--FtwJqX4c--/f_auto/v1754900041/avatars/avatar_29TCpY2hJR72V3BlxPXzX?_a=BAMClqZW0"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":9}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"I had .rocks, .surf, .space, .digital and .what-not domains with namecheap and never got issues with them\nalso this:\n“Buying a weird TLD. .com is the gold standard. I’m never buying anything else again. Once bitten and all that.”\nis just plain wrong, basically saying " i drank water from poisoned well once, so I am not drinking water in general for the rest of my life!"","datePublished":"2026-03-12T11:46:48.316Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/cMWRCnLl5#c-orADhpGQp","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Ivan Pozderac","url":"https://daily.dev/pozda","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--TXWPZECX--/f_auto/v1709771359/avatars/avatar_DXQoaoUnUwOKEL06n9OtF"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":6}}]} ```