Natural Search &
Online Tourism Consultant

Here are some top tips for inclusion in your domain dispute resolution case

1. If you have a trademark; search for it and quote the URL from the intellectual property office
2. Note the date that they registered the domain name from the whois on the Nominet.org.uk  website
3. Check the way back machine and understand what the domain was used for in the time that the current registrant owned it. Often you can see that on a accidentally dropped domain name, the new registrant immediatly puts the domain on an domain auction website. In a recent case the registrant put the domain on a domain auction site within 12hours of acquiring it which coincidentally was picked up by the way back machine therefore adding ammunition that the registrant had no intention of doing anything with the domain.
4. Take screen shots of the domain in its current state, if the domain has paid adverts from your competitors or clients this is great ammunition for your case as the regisitrant is trying to palm off their domain as your own.
5. If the domain name is for sale with a domain sales site like Sedo you can find visitor number from their domain listing page. Another useful statistic to include as squatters will often not realise this metric is publically available and would otherwise be impossible to get.
6. If the brand is registered in a personal name or UK registered business they are very unlikely to want their details broadcast if the case gets referred to an “Expert” because the case becomes publicly available. Some high profile squatters not naming any names have a truly tarnished online reputation due to the DRS process going to an experts decision on many occasions, you might want to highlight this to them in the initial correspondence.

The goal at this stage is to cover every angle and not give the registrant anywhere to move, if they are new to the DRS this is usually enough to bring on the sweats.

I have been receiving a lot of traffic recently related to people asking about free 301 redirects for their related domain names in their 123-Reg account. The redirect which 123-Reg actually implements is in fact a 302. The only way to implement a 301 on a domain name is to change the name servers to point at someone who does support 301 redirects, however, there will be a cost associated with this. If you have a Plesk Control panel you could set up an account and configure the .htaccess to conduct the redirect but this will result in a waste of account space for such a trivial task. Depending on the importance of the domain name will generally decide upon the best strategy.

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.

As of today Nominet have introduced online transfers so all the registrant of a domain needs to do is to access their online services and they can transfer the domain name to you/the buyer directly.

The old system relied on the completion of transfer forms and copies of suitable identification. The new system is based entirely online and can generally be completed in a matter of minutes.

Registrant transfer will be available in the online services account associated with the domain name. Where multiple domain names have been merged into a single account, you can choose options to allow individual or bulk transfers.

This will save a huge ammount of time in the business of domain transfer. Well done Nominet!