An article in this week's NJBiz reminds us to keep domain names short and sweet. Obviously, the fewer characters in your domain name, the less opportunity you give your visitors to misspell it.
The ideal domain name is your brief and easy-to-spell company name, without any information about its legal structure, with a .com extension. For example, I was once involved with a software company called Adox Incorporated. For us, the perfect URL would have been Adox.com--short, and phonetic. Unfortunately, that name was already in use, by Adox Fotowerke, founded in 1860. Both the software company and the photo chemical company could claim the right to use the name. My company took the URL adoxinc.com, which was less than perfect. (Although I now see that Adox.com is not being used--Andrew, what a fabulous bidding opportunity for you.)
But what if instead of two Adoxes, we had Larry's Surly Bakery squatting on JoesFriendlyBakery.com as I posited last week? A loyal reader has pointed out that all is not lost. There is a way to contest cybersquatters. ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) will hear cases like this--but only if Joe's Friendly Bakery has already trademarked or service marked his name.
My point is still that it is much easier to register your domain before you need it and before someone else grabs it.
The NJBiz article also suggests registering common misspellings of your URL. One day soon I will buy the rights to katherinehadow.com, katherinehaddow.com, and so on. It's a low-priority task at the moment, because I'm not worried that someone else will try to capitalize on my good name. Yet.
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