If only Toys ‘R’ Us would have invested in an SEO company then they would have spared the egg on their face of purchasing a domain for $5.1 million and rendering that domain name worthless within days. OK, worthless is a little harsh but they obvisouly purchased that domain because it was ranking in position #1, #2 and #4 in Google for the search query ‘toys’ with the intention of using the power that domain had picked up and transfer it to their existing domain ToysRus.com
Every SEO worth their salt would know that the correct thing to do in this instance would be to use 301 forwards from Toys.com to specific pages on the Toys R Us domain. Hell, even a full 301 to the route would have been a better option but this was not the case. Unfortunately, the web team involved only forwarded the domain name meaning essentially that Google has de-indexed the domain. Also, Google will look at registration details when a domain changes hand but this is beyond the scope of a small blog post.
For the price of hiring a half decent SEO company (or even a knowledgeable web company) all these embarrassments could have been avoided!