When starting a new business the first thing on your mind probably isn’t your domain name. It’s one of those decisions that is sometimes not really considered. You know you need one, but your first thought goes directly to your website. But just how important is the right domain name for future proofing your business.
As the application process is well underway for the new generic top level domains (gTLDs), companies continue to bid for ownership of domain extensions relating to their brand, company or country. Here at Siteopia, we have been reporting on a number of cases relating to gTLD applications and recent news has now emerged that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is predicting that 646 gTLD applications will be withdrawn.
Registering a domain on the internet is usually an easy and affordable process. However, problems can sometimes arise when you find that somebody else has already registered the domain name that you wanted. For personal websites, this isn’t usually a big deal as you can think of an alternative, but if you are registering a domain for a new business website then it can be very frustrating if a domain relating directly to your brand is unavailable.
Here at Siteopia, we often report about how a domain name registration can go awry. In an online world that has over 250 million registered domains, it is inevitable that there will be frequent disputes over who is the rightful owner to a particular moniker. In fact, 2012 marked a record year for domain name disputes and according to WIPO; there were 2,884 disputes in total. This marks a significant rise since last year and follows the trend of year-on-year dispute increases (apart from 2009 for some reason). Often these cases are resolved by a simple ‘who was there first’ and it is usually clear who the domain name really belongs to. However, things get interesting if the case is high profile or a complex.
ICANN has now passed more than 300 applications for new gTLDs through initial evaluation stage.