Can't delete former website

[paulk7737514]

I have built a website for a company with a brand new domain. Not an ideal situation, and unfortunately an older aborted website from around a decade ago shows up first when Googling the company name. It was built with a website builder and now it appears the company is out of business.

Have any of you ever dealt with this? I need to delete the old site from the server but don't know how. Can the company owner contact ICANN?

[Jon Fritz]

Contact the hosting company that has the old site up and get it redirected to the new domain.

If you can't do that (for instance if someone else has purchased the old domain and is letting it buck) there's not much you can do aside from...

1. Make the new site much more SEO friendly, purchase a block of Adwords from Google, and wait
2. Pay whatever exorbitant price the new owner of the old domain wants so the company can redirect to their current domain
3. Have your client hire a lawyer and claim cyber-squatting on a trademarked name

[paulk7737514]

This may be the company but I don't see any way to contact them: http://www.tripod.lycos.com/

[Jon Fritz]

Your client needs to log into their account with Tripod to get to the contact options.

[osgood_]

paulk7737514 wrote:

I have built a website for a company with a brand new domain. Not an ideal situation, and unfortunately an older aborted website from around a decade ago shows up first when Googling the company name. It was built with a website builder and now it appears the company is out of business.

Have any of you ever dealt with this? I need to delete the old site from the server but don't know how. Can the company owner contact ICANN?

If you can find out the hosting company by using an online look up service and prove the site/domain belongs to the client they may be able to help. Not sure where you are in the World but in the UK you could approach http://www.nominet.uk/ if its  a .co.uk name and ask them to do it, for a small fee IF as you say the previous web company has gone out of business.