Why Domain Watch – and how does it work?

Managing a company’s digital presence can be challenging. Today’s domain landscape with about 1600 domain extensions creates both opportunities and difficulties for businesses. It gives you more room to be creative in how you want to appear online, but it also makes it easier for cybercriminals to exploit your brand, which can cause significant financial and brand damage.

Typically, a company’s domain portfolio can be divided into two different parts:

• Core portfolio – which includes the domains in daily use, i.e., domains that are linked to email, website, and other business-critical systems.
  
• Tactical registrations – The tactical domain portfolio usually consists of domain names for future emerging markets as well as defensive domain registrations & common misspellings.

But how many domains should you “tactically” register, and how do you balance costs versus the value generated from defensive registrations? This, of course, depends on how your business plan looks and how critical the internet is as a playing field for your company’s business and interests. However, no company can defensively register every slight variation of its name under all the possible variants that could potentially be used by infringers. It is neither a sustainable strategy nor cost-effective.

A good and cost-effective complement to registrations is Domain Watch, which is also a central component of a company’s brand protection strategy. Let’s dive a little deeper into what domain name monitoring is and why you should implement it.

Domain Watch, part of your Brand Protection strategy

Companies of all sizes are at risk of third-party domain registrations. It can be your exact trademarks under other top-level domains or close variants, or misspellings of the names. With a monitoring service in place, you can detect these types of registrations early and act quickly on potential infringements by taking actions such as takedowns or domain disputes.

Most domains are registered because the registrant is hoping you will buy it back from them, but they won’t actually act in a more malicious way against your brand. By having a well-maintained and up-to-date domain portfolio the domains registered by third parties should not be of commercial interest to you.

This leaves you in a better position to both identify and take swift action against domains that are registered using your trademarks or name.

How does Domain Watch work in practice?

It’s possible to set up monitoring at different levels depending on the needs of the company. This can include monitoring exact domain registration matches for terms/brands, as well as close matches, misspellings, homoglyphs, or phonetically similar domains designed to mislead and deceive customers, suppliers, and employees. But it’s also possible to monitor metadata and website content to identify websites that infringe on your IP rights without using the brand in the actual domain name.

First and foremost, one must determine the type of monitoring needed and then set up monitoring for the wording or phrases that need to be monitored. Data collection will then be continuously carried out, with searches for your wording (company name, product name, or brand) conducted among 1,600 domain extensions and over 350 million registered domain names.

To make use of the results that emerge from monitoring, it’s best to have an expert who can analyze the hits that occur, and help your business identify the appropriate and most cost-effective way to deal with the infringements. It’s beneficial to have a well-defined enforcement policy so that you know when to act, and when not to. This could include takedowns, dispute resolution, cease and desist letter, or perhaps the acquisition of the domain. Read more about different routes to take for infringing domains here:

Part 1 & Part 2.

Benefits of Domain Watch:

Brand protection – Monitoring helps protect a company’s brand by identifying and acting against domain names that resemble or use the company’s trademarked name without permission.

Security – Monitoring domain registrations can also help identify and prevent phishing and other types of cyber-attacks by identifying and shutting down domains used to impersonate the Company or steal personal information.

Competition – Monitoring can also provide insight into competitor activities by identifying new domain registrations that may be associated with new products or services under development.

Final recommendations:

-View domain monitoring as an essential part of your Brand Protection strategy.

-Have a clear policy for how to address infringements.

Hire a monitoring partner with expertise in how to analyze results, choose the right path for potential infringements, and assist with actions – takedowns, dispute resolution, or domain acquisition.

Overall, domain monitoring is an important tool for protecting a company’s online presence and assets and ensuring the integrity of its brand.