Although documented in the press with large corporations, the domain highjacking issue is not of top priority when it comes to small to medium size online enterprises when it really should be. Recently I’ve been involved with closing ranks on many outstanding domain names that have either lapsed and been registered by third parties or never registered at all and the problem is a big one! Although not tried and tested yet Nominet offer a dispute resolution service where you can aim to retake control of what in your opinion is an abusive registration. In my opinion the service is priced wrongly and plays into the hands of the current registrant who will usually ask for a figure just below the DRS fee of £750 which for a domain name that cost at most £18, is not a bad return on investment and for large organisations is a quick resolution to their problem. I’ve seen situations where the domain was only 2 months old and the company paid out £500 for it’s return, although they would have had no problems in taking the domain through the DRS due to the nature in which the domain was being used and having sole trade mark, it was a critical part of their branding…the first question I asked myself was why had the .com been registered and not the .co.uk!
For any online or offline UK company it’s imperative to get both domain extensions (if you’re UK focussed I’d always 301 redirect the .co.uk to the .com it’s amazing how many companes run a duplicate site on both…this will be seen as duplicate content and will effect your natural search performance.)
1.Until domain syntax is learnt by an entire generation there will always been a 50/50 split about what is entered into the address bar.
2. Search engines will give preferential treatment to a .co.uk with a UK IP in their country specific listings.
3. If your brand is a generic one then you don’t want anyone else being able to register a powerful top level domain which could impede your brand marketing.
There are many tools out there which can help you to manage your domain names and most are free if you register your domain with your host, goDaddy and 123-Reg are two I’d recommend although 123-Reg do regularly have performance issues (so why I stay with them is a mystery) however their domain management tool is one of the easiest I have seen. If you’re on an enterprise scale then your going to need to put someone in charge or monitoring your domains unless you get a third party in like netNames or similar, however cost is going to be 3-4 times more than doing it yourself. The main concern I hear is what if it lapses…123-Reg will regularly remind you 60,30,15,3,2, and 1 day before expiry and will renew automatically unless you choose not too. I’d set the email address for the accounts to domains@mycompany.com and on the outlook exchange server have it forwarding to at least 3 chosen parties. If you choose to go for a third party to manage your domains they will usually guarantee you won’t loose a domain name but will charge you accordingly; around £5000/year for a mixture of 150 .com and .co.uk so it’s not cheap but what would be the cost if you lost one?
Domain strategy and management like reputation management is crucial in any organisation for brand longevity.
