ADVERTISING FEATURE: DEFENDING YOUR BRAND


A perpetrator who registers a domain name confusingly similar to your brand’s (the typo) can then do a number of things, including:


• Attempting to get that domain ranked highly in search engines and thereby steal organic search traffic. Alternatively they might buy keywords on search engines to get people to click on what they think is your branded site.


• Once they have the traffic, they can sell knock- off products or services from the typo domain name, or even show advertisements on their fraudulent site that your company has possibly paid for indirectly with services such as Google AdWords, thereby compelling you to pay the perpetrator for visibility you might have otherwise received directly, for free.


• Sending spam phishing email pointing back to that domain, pretending to be your company, and harvesting your users’ personal information, all under the supposed label of your brand.


Te good news is that there are free, or inexpensive, self-service tools that can help you defend your company and brand on the domain name front lines. With the advent of new generic top-level domains (TLDs) in 2013, companies need to be even more vigilant and prepared to reinforce this key line of cyber defence. Here are some strategies for fighting this battle:


Proactive domain registration


The first order of business with domain names is to register them in advance, whenever possible. As you consider new product names or brands, check the availability of domain names to make sure you won’t have to fight to secure that domain later. .com is the most important TLD for most companies, as is the country code TLD (ccTLD) in your home country and any country in which your firm does significant business.


Most registrars have good domain availability checkers and, hopefully, you have already chosen to work with a registrar that supports all of the TLDs that your business demands. Registering domains in advance will save you from the enormous cost of pursuing cybersquatters in the medium and long run.


Don’t forget about the ‘sunrise period’, a special phase prior to the general public launch of a new TLD when trademark owners can claim names that are the same as, or similar to, their trademarks. Monitor the launch of each gTLD closely to block any attempts to cybersquat your most important trademarked domain strings.


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Te second level of proactive domain registration is to register any obvious, related domain strings. Common variants include reversing words, including a dash, and obvious spelling typos. For example, in addition to gmail.com, Google owns googlemail.com, g-mail.com and gmale.com. Ask your registrar about typo generation tools that can actually suggest to you what the most common typos of your brand are.


Brand monitoring


As a brand owner, it is neither feasible nor cost- effective to own every domain that could possibly be registered with your brands. Domain-based brand monitors are the most useful, cost-effective, and possibly the most underutilised, tools available to this audience. Using brand monitors, you can discover when anyone registers a domain with your brand name(s) in the domain string.


It is very useful to monitor who/what/when on such domain registrations that are made external to the company. Proactively monitoring for these activities puts power in the hands of the brand owner to act immediately on such events. Actively prosecuting trademark-infringing domain abuse sends a warning shot to cybersquatters that may drive them to less attentive targets.


Secure domain set-up


Surprisingly, this is where companies pay the least attention, but need to be paying the most. Don’t take risks with your domain names. Assign a secure human resource to manage them and hold that resource directly accountable. How long do you expect to be in business? Straight away, renew your most important domains for at least half that many years. At $10 to $25 a year, it makes no sense to do short-term registration periods, yet it happens all the time.


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Ten, use a domain monitor to tell you when anything related to your domain names has changed, be it that the domain has expired (don’t worry: you can still recover it in the grace period), the ownership credentials have changed, or the domain name system (DNS) settings have changed, both indications of possible domain hijacking. In addition, make sure the Whois information is uniform, so that an administrator can easily manage a large set of corporate domains and, importantly, so that you can identify domains that have been improperly set up or owned by external parties.


Te battle to protect your brand and IP online is only going to get more complex. Te front lines of this battle are at the domain name and DNS level. Te required attention might be low compared to other fronts in the war, but the cost of inattention is potentially enormous, leading to reputation damage, brand confusion, and revenue loss.


Take advantage of the free or relatively inexpensive self-service tools out there and become the first to act and the first to know about potential new liabilities. A good intelligence officer can be more valuable than, and possibly remove the need for, a platoon of heavier artillery down the road. n


DomainTools is the recognised leader in domain name research and monitoring. For more than 10 years, the company has provided more than one million members with tools and services including Brand Alert, Domain Typo Finder, Registrant Alert, Reverse Whois, and Whois History. For more information visit www.DomainTools.com or email MemberServices@DomainTools.com


Susan Prosser is vice president of partner and industry relations at DomainTools. She can be contacted at: susan@domaintools.com


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