Article first published in The Drum - April 2000

The Site is Right

Just a few short years ago few people outside the technical world of the Internet knew what a domain name was. How things have changed? These days domain names are as universal as phone numbers and an entire industry has sprung up around the registration, marketing and promotion of all things .com. So what is the domain name system and why is it so important for the Internet marketer. Let’s first consider just why domain names exist.

You open the business section of the newspaper and come across the headline '212.62.8.23 shares fail to live up to hype'. Flicking on a couple of pages you spot an advert with the copy 'Looking for something on the web, let 209.67.228.56 find it for you'. As an ad it lacks a bit of punch, even with the black Labrador, the underpants and the kilt in the wind.

It's never going to happen of course. You'd be hard pushed to find many businesses willing to mould their entire marketing output around their phone number. Take the numbers above and put them into your browser (don’t forget the http:// bit) and you'll get whisked off to lastminute.com and lycos.com respectively. The importance of domain names becomes instantly apparent. Without the Domain Name System (DNS) the Internet may well have remained in the realm of computer enthusiasts, academics and the military. Using the Internet without DNS would be as troublesome as having to call your colleague '01236 225 5467' instead of 'Andy'.

Once a method was introduced of giving recognisable names to geographically dispersed computers the Internet grew exponentially and the number of web sites proliferated. The Americans, being at the forefront of just about everything, introduced a system of assigning top level domains (TLD's) for different types of organisations; thus emerged .edu, .mil, .org, .net and the Big Daddy of TLD's, .com. As well as these global domains, each country has it's own TLD, thus in this country we have the .uk naming system; the French have .fr, the Japanese .jp and .to belongs to the Tongans. The Americans have a domain of there own as well, .us, it's just not used that much, as they tend see .com et al. as there own playground in which others are granted privilege to play. As .uk on it's own doesn't say a lot about the different types of organisation the domain is subdivided into little baby domains (technically called Second Level Domains or SLD’s) including the all familiar .co.uk, .org.uk and a whole batch of other something .uk's.

The .com domain is by far the most popular. Of the 15.7 million domains registered to date around 9.5 million of those have been .com's. Our friend .co.uk has clocked up a fairly impressive 1.002 million, just knocked into third place by our German nieghbours with an impressive 1.032 million .de names registered. So for a UK business wishing to register a domain what is best; a .co.uk or a .com? The easy answer has to be to get both if you can. Cover your bases. Around half of all sites are found for the first time through intuitive browsing. Intuitive browsing being market-talk for guessing a name, plugging it into a browser and seeing where you end up.

It's a very human way to search for a site; you see or hear a company name, want to find out if they've got a site, take the name and plug in .com or .co.uk into your favourite browser and bingo! Effective on-line marketing or opportunity lost with your potential customer off looking for someone else to satisfy their needs. The days when it was acceptable to run your web site from an address like http://www.my internetserviceprovider.com/~mybusinesscantafordaname.htm are long gone. No self-respecting business can afford to be without a domain name especially as the costs for registering and owning your own piece of the virtual landscape are so low. Certainly, 3-4 years ago when nearly all names other than those belonging to the global players like IBM (IBM.com) were still available the handful of companies who offered a domain name registration service may have charged fees into the hundreds of pounds. Things have changed and a proliferation of companies have emerged who will happily register your name for a fee equivalent to a pack of fags and pint of beer. A word of caution – make sure you understand the processes involved in name registration and transfer. Many companies have been stung through working with unscrupulous registration companies who employ all manner of tricks to bully the customer at a later date. For example, if the registration company registers the domain name in their name rather than in the name of a client there could be problems. In the this case the name is owned by the service provider who could then pull a web site offline without warning or even sell a good name to the highest bidder. Does that really happen? Every day is the answer. Make sure you can trust the company who registers your name and ask them up-front if there will be any costs associated with transferring it at a later date.

Think back to our intuitive browsers, playing with domains, seeing what they can dig up. Try the photographers name; colinprior.com where does it take you? Funnily enough the same place as mounteverest.com, scottishmountains.com, bennevis.net and themunros.co.uk. The list goes on but I'm sure you get the idea.

However there is no point in ducking the issue, buying up 30 or so domains and pointing them at your site is going to cost money. Money which many a small business simply doesn’t have. Essentially a .com is what to go for if your market is global, otherwise a .co.uk is just as good. The real power of .com is only just emerging; read the papers and what last year were known as ‘internet companies’ are now referred to as ‘dot coms’. Yesterdays technobabble becoming today’s chit-chat is a sure sign that of the subconscious power of the domain name.

Picking a domain name can be a frustrating business, but if you haven’t done so already you had better get a wriggle on otherwise you’ll be picking up the scraps after the vultures have cleared up and flown away. You don’t need to have a web site, you don’t even need to have a computer, just the nonce to know that at some point you may want to have an internet presence, and that if you don’t get your domain pretty soon there’s a mighty high chance that someone else will get there first.

First off check it’s available, if not try again. Domains are allowed to contain letters, numbers and hyphens, it must start and end with a letter or number, must be longer than 2 characters and you may use any combination or spelling of words desired. Expletives are out for .coms, (try registering scunthorpe.com and seeing what happens), but ok for .uk. You want guidelines?.

First off, keep it as short as possible. Short is sweet. Short is easy to remember. Short name means less spelling mistakes. The elusive one word domain is fast becoming an endangered species, and the less there are of them the greater the value. The asking price for America.com is $30 million cash, and so far buyers have offered deals worth more than $10 million. Recent prices paid include $7.5 million for Business.com, $3.25 million for AltaVista.com, $3 million each for Loans.com and Wine.com, and $2.2 million for Autos.com.

Six years ago, Business.com was worth just $150,000, and in 1994 Loan.com could have been yours for free.

Despite the already sky-high values for highly memorable addresses, the scramble has only just begun, and brokers have emerged to match buyers and sellers of domain names that can easily translate into marketing gold.

"It's a real big business and will get a lot bigger. It'll make a gold rush look like peanuts," said Mark Ostrofsky, a Houston-based entrepreneur who paid a British firm just $150,000 in 1995 for Business.com. He had planned to start a magazine with that name, but many other companies had even greater ambitions.

Guideline number two; try to be unambiguous. A sign of a good domain name is one heard on the radio in the morning and remembered in the office at lunch time. Ambiguity comes in many guises with domains, the biggest culprits being hyphens and krayzee (sic) spellings. Good in print perhaps but a real pain "hyphen" in "hyphen" the "hyphen" ass to communicate over the phone. That said, there are compelling reasons for taking the hyphenated versions in addition to the one word equivalents. Not widely known outside the realm of the hardcore Internet marketer is that search engines prefer addresses with hyphens. Stuffing as many keywords as possible into your domain name is a great way to improve your search engine placement.

Guideline number three, after securing your company name, go generic. Imagine the potential value to the on-line off license that’s got wine.com, or the bank that moved to secure loans.com. How much? $3 million each. Given the sheer volume of pornography on the Internet, how much would you pay for sex.com?

Why is a good domain so important? The Internet has moved from novelty technology to mainstream culture in an incredibly short space of time. It took only 20 years for computers to create the worlds richest men and for the Internet to spawn the world’s biggest organisations. Everybody wants a piece of the pie, the race to secure potentially lucrative virtual real estate has been likened to the California gold rush in the 1840’s.

The key to this real estate, is the domain name. It’s no surprise then that a system based on the first come first served principle has produced a fair few squabbles.

By the time certain large multinationals had cottoned on to the fact that there was serious money to be made from the Internet, they were already one step behind the frontiersmen who had got to domainsville first. Everything was up for grabs and the cowboys moved in. It made sense at the time; buy a domain and then sell it for a whopping great profit. It certainly did to One in a Million Ltd who, in 1997, registered cadburys.com, sainsburys.com, and ladbrokes.com and then stuck a ‘for sale’ sign on them. Which company wouldn’t be miffed after spending years or decades building up a brand name only to find it their on-line presence crash landed before take off. Cybersquatting was born, and domains became big news. Big business appealed to the law, but if big business was one step behind, then the law was sat on the front step having trouble with it’s shoelaces.

By the time the law had caught up millions of domains had been registered and the number of cases brought against cybersquatters was on the increase. On in a Million, were taken to court by Marks & Spencers, Ladbrokes, Sainsburys, Virgin and BT. Unsurprisingly One in a Million lost the case. The presiding judge ruled that the domains were registered with the intent of causing confusion, for the sole purpose of profiteering and that the defendants had no legitimate right to them. In the US the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act was made law last year allowing damages of up to $100,000 if a company can prove that a domain is registered in ‘bad faith’ and motivated by an effort to mislead or to extract money from the holder of the trademark. The disputes continue; earlier this month the BBC won a high court injunction preventing someone selling bbc1.com and bbc2.com to the highest bidder. The BBC have been extremely proactive in securing their Internet presence, last year they spent an undisclosed amount buying bbc.com from Boston Business Computing. The BBC site is one of the most popular in Europe and so securing it’s online presence is a long-term investment.

If you find that a domain you believe you have the right to has been registered by someone else, try doing a WHOIS lookup on the domain (www.demon.net/external), this will tell who registered the name and when. Send them an e-mail and find out what their intentions are, they might be good Samaritans who are protecting it from domain pirates until it’s rightful owner comes along. If, however, you feel that there are more sinister forces at play try the dispute resolution service provided by Nominet for .uk domains (www.nominet.org.uk) or ICANN for global domains (www.icann.org). The potential for harm is clear; a competitor could use your domain to a) sell it back to you at an inflated price, b) use it to drive more customers to his site or c) use it to say really bad things about you and your business. Option c is often referred to as cyberbashing and is why many organisations register seemingly derogatory domains. Try typing in www.georgebushsucks.com and finding out where it takes you.

So what does the future hold for the discerning domain watcher. It is possible that the .com TLD will lose is cache and cease to generate the ridiculous sums of money it does now. As the Internet gets clogged up with millions of useless domains, talk has been towards the creation of more TLD’s in an attempt to relieve some of the pressure on old Grandpa Dotcom who’s beginning to show his age. What about a .biz, or a .shop domain to go with your collection. The European Union, not wanting to be left out, is keen to promote the .eu domain, but it’s a bit too vowelly and too unpleasant to have to say too often. Talk is rife in the air of a possible .scot domain which is certainly an attractive option with bucketfuls of potential as Scottish companies become more and more switched on to the real benefits the Internet has to offer.

The danger with introducing new TLD’s is another gold rush, and with the fortunes to be made so well documented, a real possibility that most of the generic domains will be gone before most of us are out our comfybeds.com. Of course it may be that the frenzied interest in domains will simmer down and people will start to look behind the name, and taking a look at the flesh and bones of the business instead. It’s finally becoming clear that a good business makes a good domain, not the other way round. What the hell is a Yahoo anyway?

Stefan Cent registers domains for a living for On the Spot Internet - stefan@onthespot.co.uk
Tel. 0141-574-2501