Should I buy more than one variation of a Domain name?

Domain Registrations – Why Secure different versions of a domain name?

This may be an obvious answer for some – but for the unenlightened, not securing a common or well used domain extension of your name could cause you problems further down the line to your Internet empire!

As we all know, a domain name is your online representation of you or your business, or indeed just something you represent.  Let’s take for example that you are just starting out a new business local to where you are, and you thought it was a good idea to have Internet/website representation of your new business.  A common starting point for us all!  Our example business will be say, a mobile flower arranging/delivery service.  You’ve decided to call your business ‘Flower in an Hour’, and are now looking for a fitting domain name that will represent you online.   As it happens, you’re in luck with finding a suitable domain name.  Searching on ‘flowerinanhour’ has returned many results, one of which that caught your eye was ‘flowerinanhour.co.uk’.  This is obviously quite fitting, as a .uk domain name is somewhat representative of you residing/operating in the UK – and you wish for people to know this.

Now for this example we have used, we have only decided to buy the one domain name.  There is nothing uncommon with this, so why the need to secure other variations of the domain name ‘flowerinanhour’?  You only need to have a hosting plan or website on your domain name to have your web presence up on the Internet…   So again, why the need for other variations?

The reason why people secure multiple variations of their domain name, is mainly for security.  Should our fictitious business of Flower in an Hour (flowerinanhour.co.uk) really take-off, you may find that somewhere down the line, someone will take note of your success, and try mimicking your successful business.  Now unless you have Trademarked your company name ‘Flower in an Hour’, there is nothing stopping a potential rival from also starting a company called Flower in an Hour – they don’t even have to be based in the same part of the world as you.

For this potential rival – they too have performed a domain name availability search.  Lo and behold, flowerinanhour.co.uk is shown as taken.  However, flowerinanhour.com is showing as available!  Your rival decides to snap up this variation of the domain name and ultimately publishes a similar looking website to yours, offering exactly the same service.

You now find yourself in the situation where members of the public, having heard of ‘Flower in an Hour’ through word of mouth, etc.  are now mistaking flowerinanhour.com for your website,  flowerinanhour.co.uk (how are they to know any different?)  This occurrence is becoming ever more common, as more enterprises try to piggy-back on others successes.  Having built up your business and gaining a good reputation, your new rival who now trades on ‘flowerinanhour.com’ will have an almost instant customer base – simply because for those members of the public who are not completely aware of your particular domain name, inadvertently order from the .com version.

The long and short of this situation – is that there is very little you can do.  Without holding a trademark to that name, nothing is stopping anyone else from securing a similar variation of a domain name you may already operate or own.   In case you were curious, it would be hard for you to establish a trademark on ‘your name’ i.e. trade marking a persons name of ‘Robert Smith’ for example.   Trade marking unique trading names is fairly common place…  but peoples names on the other hand,  are common names throughout the globe!  Just check for yourself by searching up you own name on a social networking site.  I’m sure there’s more than one of you out there!

So what to do?

The obvious thing to do to minimise these situations from happening, is simply to secure the other variations of your domain name.  If you are realising this for the first time, you may already find that the other variants of your domain name may already be taken.  There is unfortunately very little you can do in this situation unless you hold a trademark over your name.

Now using our domain availability checker:

http://www.lcn.com/domain_names

and searching for domain names, you will find a number of different domain variations presented in front of you.  There are .com, .net, .co.uk, .org…  snapping up all the variations can obviously become quite costly!

What we do notice a trend of, are those customers starting up a business will secure the most common variants of their name.  At this moment in time, .com and .co.uk are two of the most common domain types on the Internet.  If you are still unsure, take this scenario.  A friend mentions to you in passing that they have created a new website recently, and they want you to take a look sometime.  They only told you the name of the company (and they didn’t give you the web/URL address).  Now the website is newly launched, so searching for the company name on a search engine did not yield any results..   the next thing you find yourself doing is guessing the name, by entering variations of that company name into your URL bar.  Ask yourself which domain name variations you would try first?  Highly likely you would try the .com version followed by the .co.uk  The amount of domain variations you try would only be limited to your knowledge of the various types of domain name you know (.info, org, .me, etc.).  Put yourself into your customers shoes.  How many do you think they would try before giving up?

This is the primary reason why all the largest companies not only hold trademarks over the name, but also hold all the domain name variantions possible for their name (.com, .co.uk, .net, etc).  This not only ensures that no one else can mistakenly purchase a variation of their name, and possibly sully their name – by having an abusive representation of their company as a website.  But it also means the domain owner can control all the traffic of visitors who may visit any one of those domain variations, and ultimately direct them to the correct website!

I hope you have found this post helpful and informative.  Please do share any comments or experiences you may wish to leave.