Domain Names in Multiple Countries

Why is it necessary to register your brand name in other countries?

Many companies and small businesses have registered multiple instances of their domain name. I was speaking recently to a website hosting professional and came to find out that his company had registered the .com, .net, .org and .biz top level domains for their brand name. The company had also recently decided to expand into Europe, and had registered the .co.uk domain extension of the brand.

This information - coupled with my own domain name experience from several years ago - got me to thinking. According to Daniel Foster, co-founder of .co.uk domains registrar 34SP.com, ”While it is important to protect your brand and even secure country-specific TLD’s, we see many of our clients who simply register the domains and then point them all at a common .com URL.” So what is really involved in securing your brand name in different countries and TLD’s? The experience I had was one where I was simply searching for domain names related to a new product category for my company. I found (of course) that all the usual top level domains were already registered. Interestingly though, the very same domains in several other top level domains - namely country-specific domains were not yet registered. As I proceeded to register (or in some cases, attempt to register) the domains - I learned a few very important lessons.

Not All Domains are Created Equal - That should really say "Not All Domains are Priced Equally". Although I had a vague sense of some differing domain prices, I incorrectly assumed that the .com extension was among the most expensive. Not true. Here is a short list of domains and some representative prices collated together as gathered recently from two large domain registrars. First on the list are the worldwide extensions, followed by some more popular country code top level domains. Prices are quoted in dollars. Note the wide variation in different prices for the domain extensions.