Member Article

Domain Suffixes - What Should I Buy?

Should You Buy New domain Suffixes to Protect Your Brand?

Anyone following the saga of Taylor Swift and her purchase of .porn and .adult domains might be tempted to follow suit, but when you view the landscape you are going to need pretty deep pockets to buy all of the domains out there.

The addresses are part of a public sale by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The web domain names go on sale to the public on 1 June but some stars and companies are being given the opportunity to buy them before they go on general sale

Microsoft Office has registered Office.porn and Office.adult.

The .porn and .adult suffixes are around £67.00 ($99.00) if you really must have them!

Richard Branson and Stringfellows have also bought .adult and .porn domains, according to ICANN.

The American non-profit group expanded the number of generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, such as .com and .net in 2011.

There were 22 four years ago but now there are nearly 550 with new ones released every month, which makes securing your brand by buying multiple domains a non-starter. The man flavours for UK companies are still .com and .co.uk; but cybersquatters picking up the other domain suffixes and creating similar companies to yours - then offering the domain to you at hyper-inflated prices can be an ongoing problem.

There is one little gem I would recommend to all UK companies and that is .uk. This new, shortened version of the UK domain really focuses attention on your brand name and went on sale in June last year.

UK domains are a well established and trusted element of the UK Internet infrastructure with 4 in 5 people preferring .uk websites when searching or buying online. Google’s algorithm also seems to favour .co.uk sites when searches are made from the UK.

There is a caveat – you have to own the .co.uk before you can buy the .uk and this rule will remain in place until June 10th 2019 to allow .co.uk owners to secure their new domain suffix. After that date they will go on general release.

We grabbed ours last June, and when we rebranded, we made sure that the names we wanted were available in the main flavours - .com and .co.uk – and of course .uk.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Glass Frog .