Expired Auction Domain from Athlete - Problems?

Good morning folks,

I need some advice. I recently bought an expired domain from a well known athlete. The domain is his name.

So: JohnExampleAthlete.com

Whenever you search for his name, my site shows up in the serps on 1.

The problem is, the athlete is still active and also has a lot of active followers only on a different domain.

I'm afraid if he searches for his name at some point he will see that I have taken over the domain and may have all the backlinks removed that he knows about.

Is there any way I can get my site off the serps for his name? What is the best way for me to act in this situation?

If you're using WordPress, go to settings and discourage the website from Google index

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Benji1 said:

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So are you only not wanting to rank for his name but also wanting to rank for other terms?

Or do you want the site to not appear on Google for any search terms?

PHPInjected said:

So are you only not wanting to rank for his name but also wanting to rank for other terms?

Or do you want the site to not appear on Google for any search terms?

Click to expand...

I dont want to Rank for His Name.

For Other search terms i want to appear OFC.

This is an interesting scenario to be honest.

Name by itself cannot be trademarked. There are exceptions, but your name would have to be a massive brand. Lady Gaga, etc.

However, the word "athlete" in the domain makes it much more specific and I wonder how WIPO would decide in this particular case.

Because let's be honest here. If I were searching for Mohamed Salah and the first result would be MoSalahFootballer, then I would surely click that.

Are you economically benefiting from this misconception? You are. If the domain name were just the name itself, I would say you are alright, but this way, not so sure.

Try to look for some similar cases to yours. I am sure there have to be some precedent.