Dealing With Baggage – When Acquiring Domains, Be Sure to Check for Surprises

What does it take to build a strong domain name portfolio? Obviously a company must consider domain names that match its trademarks and slogans. It should also consider leveraging generic-term domain names to demonstrate leadership in its industry. Search terms used to find the company and its products can be used as domain names. And country code extensions will help a company with a strong customer base in foreign countries.

But that’s not all.

Companies must also ensure that they address problems that may arise as the portfolio is being built. For example, if a company acquires a domain name that had a previous owner, the company would do well to investigate the history of the domain name so it knows the baggage it will be taking on.

The baggage may be helpful, say, if the previous owner worked to deliver good content and developed strategies that increased the visibility of that domain name. The brand might continue to benefit from increased visitor traffic to its new site. Or, the baggage may be harmful. Perhaps, unbeknownst to the company, a newly acquired domain name had previously been used to host unsavory content like adult entertainment. In that case, the domain name may be classified in a way that servers automatically block it – even if the new content is squeaky clean.

When acquiring domain names, companies must do their due diligence. They must examine past uses of the domain name before launching any content or using the domain name in advertisements. Any existing issues can then be addressed by security firms that offer web cleaning or reputation enhancement technology. These types of firms can help reclassify domain names and eliminate links from other sites that could undercut a company’s good reputation.

Have questions about how to scrub a domain name clean? Feel free to reach out to us.