How Lapsed Leads works
Every lead goes through the same four checks before it ever reaches you. Here is what happens behind the scenes.
Step 1: Search Google Maps for the category and location
You give us a trade or service category and a UK town or city. We scan Google Maps for every listed business in that category with a website URL attached to its listing. Businesses with no website at all are excluded, since that is a different, much more common type of lead that most tools already cover.
Step 2: Check every website live
Each website URL gets a live request. If it returns an error, the connection is refused, the domain does not resolve, or it simply times out, we mark the site as dead. A site that loads fine, even if it looks outdated or badly designed, is not a dead website lead. We are only interested in sites that are actually offline.
Step 3: What WHOIS and RDAP tell us
RDAP is the modern, structured replacement for WHOIS. For every dead website, we look up the domain registration record to see whether the domain itself is still owned by someone or whether it has lapsed. This single fact changes the whole pitch. A business with a registered domain almost certainly has a hosting problem, a lapsed payment, or a broken server. A business with an expired domain has lost the address entirely and anyone could register it.
Domain status categories, explained
- Registered. The domain is still owned. The website is offline for a different reason, usually a hosting or server issue. Example: a builder switched web hosts two years ago and the new host was never fully set up.
- Available. The domain registration has expired and been released. Anyone can register it for the standard renewal fee. Example: a cafe closed for six months, let the domain lapse, and the name is now sitting unclaimed.
- On auction. The domain expired recently enough that it is likely sitting in a registrar auction window rather than fully released. Example: a domain that lapsed three weeks ago is often listed on GoDaddy Auctions or NameJet before it becomes freely available again.
Step 4: Why the Wayback Machine date matters
The Internet Archive keeps a historical record of most public websites. We query it for the most recent snapshot where the site returned a normal, working response. That date tells you how long the site has actually been offline, which is one of the most persuasive facts in your pitch. A site that has been down for eight months is a very different conversation to one that broke last week.