Domain Registration Best Practices

By admin | July 18, 2021 |

For more information please download the new MarkMonitor Domain Handbook at http://info.markmonitor.com/handbook_domainmanagement

Discover domain registration best practices based on the 15-plus years of experience MarkMonitor® has as the industry’s first corporate-only domain registrar.

In this video you will learn:

– How to categorize branded trademarks for domain registration
– Domain registration steps to take to maximize exposure on the web and generate e-commerce revenue worldwide
– Defensive registration steps
– Best practices for whois information
– … and much more

For companies with a global presence, managing an international domain name portfolio has become an increasingly complex challenge.

Although domain names are often managed in a manner similar to trademarks, the complexities associated with domain names are far more intricate.

Based on our 15-plus years of experience as the industry’s first corporate-only domain registrar, we’ve developed a group of best practices.

Up until a few years ago, companies would register all popular gTLDs, ccTLDs that are unrestricted or have minimal requirements, and all likely targets of domain abuse include common misspellings and typos.

But with the current environment, that practice is no longer an option.

How can you ensure proper coverage while still maintaining costs?

Key brands are typically categorized as TMs registered in 15-30 countries or more than 5000 instances of abuse in .com.

We recommend registering your key brands in exact match and popular typos, very limited variations or misspellings.

We do not recommend defensively registering in all top TLDs, but you should look at the top 25 TLDs and select new gTLDs.

Important brands may be those that are specific to a particular region of the world, and limited brands often consist of slogans, which are used to support specific campaigns for a limited period of time.

For important or limited brands, focus should be placed upon exact-match registrations across the top 5-10 TLDs, unless significant cybersquatting exists. It is recommended that domain registrations align with trademark registrations, so that if a French trademark exists, the corresponding .fr domain also is registered. Using an automated tool can help to accomplish this quickly and accurately. When identifying where to register, ensure that domains provide adequate coverage to meet corporate objectives. It is also important to think about future marketing needs.

If the objective is to maximize exposure on the web and generate e-commerce revenue worldwide, the following should be considered:

– Geographic locations where you have offices or do business
TLDs that support worldwide sales and marketing efforts
– All legacy generic top-level domains (gTLDs)
– Select new gTLDs
– Top 10, 25 or 50 e-commerce countries

If your company’s culture is one that is extremely risk adverse, then registering defensively may make sense. Those extensions that are most at-risk for cybersquatting include:

– Popular legacy gTLDs
– Free or low-cost, unrestricted country code top-level domains (ccTLD) extensions
– Unrestricted, generic new gTLDs

While registering defensively (especially misspellings and typosquats) can help to ensure that your clients find you, it does not negate the need for actively monitoring for abuse.

Standard Whois information should be used whenever possible to allow for uniformity throughout a domain portfolio.

Only legitimate information should appear on Whois records.