Should you buy all available domain extensions?

March 22, 2009 7:12 AM

How important is it to purchase all available domain extensions?

I have had this debate with a few people. Some feel it's good security to purchase all extensions available, and not just .com. Others feel its too expensive. What is the general opinion?

posted by scarello to technology (12 comments total)

How much does it cost for each extension per year? $10? If your business cannot afford $100 to $200 per year, it is not a good risk reward business that you seek to start.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 7:29 AM on March 22

If it's an online business -- you take money online -- because there's a possibility that someone would create a copycat site with a different extension, yes, I'd buy them all. And I'd keep current with the creation of new extensions to be sure to grab them.

If you don't actually do commerce online, then you need to assess the potential risk from someone pretending to be you.

For a personal site, no.
posted by justcorbly at 7:36 AM on March 22

I'm going to go with: It depends.

It is mostly a question of budget in short and long term. If just buying the .net and .com feels expensive, then it isn't worth it, because once you start buying extra domains the nextx logical step is to buy common typo domains as well.

There's a line somewhere, but it's somewhat hard to find. If you don't get it now while it's relatively cheap then you might end up at the whim of a squatter in the future, but if you register it now and let it lapse then it's almost definitely going to end up in the hands of a squatter. Paying the annual fee for 5 years while you're obscure could be worth the savings against getting it later.

I think the thing to do is find a comfortable annual domain budget - maybe it's $10, maybe it's $1000. In terms of importance, I would say that it is probably worth claiming the .com, .net and .org for a 10-year lease. Other misspellings and less-popular tlds and cctlds can be added and managed over time. Track clicks to the bad domains and determine if it is worth the expense. If no one goes to alternatedomain27.com after a year, maybe it can lapse.

In the long run, I think that any one domain can generally be secured against typos and squatters in this fashion for well under $1000 annually. For some budgets that's a trivial expense.
posted by cCranium at 7:38 AM on March 22

The purist in me wants to say that it defeats the whole purpose of having different top-level domains if people and companies buy the same domain in every one of them. And it only encourages those who want to extract more money by creating additional top-level domains that owners of existing sites will register in.

But on the other hand, if you have a popular site and you don't buy all the common variations that people might try, someone else surely will and will make money from it. So if the site is popular, or you are planning for the eventuality that it might be, and if you can afford it, then yes, buy into all the common top-level domains you can.

[For some reason that last sentence sounds like it belongs in the opening credits of The A Team]
posted by FishBike at 8:31 AM on March 22

Domains are dirt cheap. I typically buy the same domain under com, org, net, eu, and se for my private projects. As someone has said, if you cannot afford $50 a year on domains, you have no business running a business.

Hell, if I was running a proper business I would register domains on as many TLDs as possible AND common misspellings too.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 8:46 AM on March 22

It might even be relevant to register common adversarial domains, e.g. foobarSUCKS, foobarSUX, foobarWATCH, TRUTHABOUTfoobar, IHATEfoobar, etc.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:02 AM on March 22 [2 favorites has favorites]

As a owner of several domain names I would encourage you to buy all domains and common mis-spellings or alternate spellings to the domain. Certainly if you plan to make a business or brand out of the web site name.

Last year, I had someone register a domain name very similar to one of my main sites with just one letter difference. The person started a business using this name and advertised in the same locations that I did. The new business is related to my business and has the same purpose.

Not only was I upset but I could do not do anything legally about it. My website started as a hobby that transformed into a business that I am branding.

Had I spent the $7.95 per year fee domain registration for similar sounding sites I wouldn't have had this problem.

Well worth the cost if you are serious about having a domain name for a few years or more.
posted by randomthoughts at 9:29 AM on March 22

I think it's smarter to get the .com or whatever you're pinning the site on, then getting a trademark so as to have tools to avoid the situation randomthoughts describes. I think being a TLD completeist is overrated.
posted by rhizome at 1:01 PM on March 22

Thanks for all the informative replies folks. Right now I am just parking a couple of .com domains for future use. One is a portfolio website and the other is a business tied to it, so, its not really guaranteed that these sites will be money makers, but built more for exposure.
posted by scarello at 1:24 PM on March 22

There's a line somewhere, but it's somewhat hard to find.

IMA[Trademark/Domain Dispute]A, but IMNYTDDA. Generally, the first question to ask is: Do you own a trademark registration on the name you are attempting to register as a domain(s)? If you do not own a trademark registration--and especially if the reason that you do not own a trademark registration is because your business name is not registerable because it is descriptive and/or generic to your product/services--then it is probably advisable that you buy all of the primary TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .info, .us. .biz)

Owning a trademark registration affords you at least some recourse in the event that a competitor (or more likely, cybersquatter) were to register your name (including misspellings/typo errors) in other domain extensions. However, if your business name is something unoriginal like “TOPUSAVITAMINS” then it’s first come, first served--so buy up your extensions.
posted by applemeat at 2:05 PM on March 22

I think being a TLD completeist is overrated.

I would agree to the extend that cybersquatters are, in my experience, more likely to register "YOURNAM3.COM" or "WWWYOURNAME.COM" than "YOURNAME.INFO."
posted by applemeat at 2:25 PM on March 22

applemeat - I have to say, as someone in the domain industry who deals with overzealous TM attorneys all day long I find your comment(s) here refreshing. I couldn't agree more.
posted by FlamingBore at 11:12 PM on March 23