Why Defensive Domain Name Registrations Aren't a Good Deal for Small Businesses

[Blake]

Conventional wisdom says businesses should preemptively buy domain names to keep them out of the hands of competitors, griping customers, pornographers or other malefactors. This process is sometimes called “defensive” domain name registration.

In theory, defensive registrations save money. For a relatively low upfront cost (a single .com domain name costs about $10 a year), a business avoids spending thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get the name back from a malefactor—if it’s possible to get the name back at all.

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Courtesy of: Eric Goldman @ Forbes.com

 

[domainhacks-931385]

great article no need to get nuts.com when your site nutsonline is doing vey well.

 

[Dave_Z]

Kinda rare for someone - and a lawyer at that - to combine tidbits on marketing, legal, and technology that somehow makes sense to the average layperson. But...that's Eric Goldman for you.

Good read.

 

[alien51]

In that article, the author was talking about defensive regs related to "variations" in your domain name.

So you are talking about variations like "handbags", "myhandbags", "handbag (singular)", "handbagsonline"... etc.

Perhaps it is true, that you just focus on one "brandable" domain. And that's it. Or you can snag these variations and divert the traffic to your one and only site.

What the article did NOT talk about, is defensive regs "across domain extensions". Ok, so you own "nutsonline.com". Should you do defensive regs on "nutsonline.NET"?

I am running a couple of small businesses myself. And i can assure you that it is a pain in the neck to have a competitor running alongside your .COM and doing business on a .NET. I tried to Google my own site, and the bastard is sitting right next to my site neck-to-neck on search results. And we have exactly the same identical domain brand. It's crazy.

I read the article there about NUTS.COM. I think his concern that a competitor can grab that domain, is a valid issue. Paying to get NUTS.COM was not the problem. His problem was how to divert and manage his traffic (since he now owns both domains), and getting his SEO back up to speed.

So i think defensive regs can be good for business when done strategically. What is bad is trying to "overdo" it because you are super paranoid about competition that you try to buy as many as possible.