The Registration of domain names is a thriving business on the Internet today - this is evident by the high bids that companies are willing to pay in Per-Per-Click (PPC) engines to attract potential customers for domain name registration.

The business of domain name registration is sometimes referred to as “Internet Real Estate”. Just like we can occupy high traffic areas in the central business districts of major cities in the real world, we can register domains for commonly used words or sought after keywords to generate traffic more easily to our websites. While most common words and abbreviations have already been taken for the most widely used top level domain names, with a little bit of creativity we can still register an endless number of promising domain names.

While there is no clear indication to what extent .com, .net as well as country top level domain names such as .co.uk, .de, .fr and so forth influence search engine rankings of websites, the word is that .org domains are still favored by Google as part of the non-commercial tradition.

However, this article is not looking at how the domain extension influences the ranking of a website as this is thought to be insignificant for search engine rankings. A stronger influence on search engine rankings have indeed the length of registration, frequency of DNS changes as well as the reputation of the registrar.

Even though sometimes overrated in its importance - especially in relationship to its effect on search engine rankings, domain names do remain an important asset for the online corporate identity of your business.

The main consideration concerning your domain name will be to choose between a creative name (such as “yahoo”, “alibaba”, “kazaa”) or a keyword name (such as “study-tourism”, “retail-gifts” or “hawaii-mortgage-company”. In fact using main keywords in your domain name does have a positive effect on your search engine rankings, especially to get your rankings off the ground after launching a new website. Down the road the effect however becomes almost negligible.

While many people tend to register numerous domain names to accommodate most important key words within them, they overlook that Google and other major search engines will pay almost the same attention to sub-domains. So instead of registering “hawaii-real-estate”, “florida-real-estate” and so forth, we might as well just register “real-estate” and have sub domains such as “hawaii.real-estate”, “florida.real-estate” and so forth.

What people further underestimate is that search engines in general look for keywords in the URL (unique resource locator) which comprises of the top level domain, any potential sub-domains and of course the file name. So, if you happen to be using a creative domain name that does not contain any important key words, you can of course include your main keywords in the file name of the webpage itself, i.e. florida-real-estate.html.

Hence, in a nutshell, while domain names are a major asset for your corporate identity, their significance for search engine rankings is overrated, as there are various ways to accommodate significant keywords in the URL and eventually other onsite factors (coding techniques, content) of a website will have a greater impact for search engine rankings.

Svend Nelson is a university lecturer and Internet entrepreneur. He is an online marketing specialist active in various online industries; among his online presences in the real estate and home loan industry are Hawaii Real Estate Listings and Hawaii Home Loans. Svend also just started a blog sharing his experience about how to make money online. Svend lived and worked in various countries across Latin America, Europe and Asia before settling in Thailand.

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If you have or are about to purchase a domain name, YOU could be in trouble and you don’t even know it yet…

See, what the domain sellers won’t tell you is that the domain name you are purchasing or have purchased can possibly infringe on trademark rights and you can lose that domain name or even worse.

Trademark and servicemark laws apply not only off-line but on-line as well and they even apply to domain names.

Now, a trademark generally applies to goods where as a servicemark applies to services. For the purpose of this article I will refer to trademarks as the same rules apply.

A trademark can be a word, name, symbol, or device and it is used to distinguish and indentify the goods and services from one person or company from that of another.

The purpose of a trademark is to prevent confusion in the eyes of the consumer relating to particular goods and services. Basically, they are in place to prevent unfair competition.

So with that said, just because you purchased a particular domain name it does not necessarily mean you have exclusive rights to it.

If there is a trademark in your domain name, the mark owner has a legal right to send you a “cease and desist” letter and possibly take that domain name away from you.

If you don’t believe a word I’ve said so far then I offer myself as proof because it happened to me. I recently lost one of my domain names under this exact same circumstance.

For legal reasons I can’t tell you the domain name as I agreed to make no further references to it, but there were two words in my domain name that were associated with a trademark.

Now, I wasn’t aware of this when I purchased the domain name. And I definitely wasn’t aware of trademark laws.

Don’t be ignorant on the subject like I was. You can avoid any potential problems by educating yourself and thereby preventing the samething from happening to you.

Don’t make the same mistake that I did!

Do your research before you buy a domain name and make sure there is NO trademark associated with that name.

There are trademark search engines where you can type in a word or a phrase and it will tell you if it is a trademark.

You can visit the United States Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO) website to do a trademark search:

http://www.uspto.gov/

Now, in my case I chose not to fight the trademark dispute and gave up my domain name voluntarily. I felt it just wasn’t worth the time, money and headaches to launch a fight over this.

If this should ever happen to you, you do have rights and there are proper channels to go through to settle the dispute. Contact a lawyer who specializes in this field.

And don’t even think for one minute that this sort of thing can’t happen to you. Trust me. If you have a trademark in your domain name it is only a matter of time before you get that letter in the mail like I did.

There are numerous cases all over the internet concerning disputes over trademark and domain names.

Don’t you be one of them…

If you would like more information on the subject of trademarks and domain names then I highly recommend you visit this website:

http://www.chillingeffects.org/domain

This article and any links associated with it are for informational purposes only and not intended as legal advice. As always, speak to an attorney who specializes in this field in the event of a dispute.

Al Martinovic is the publisher of the Millenium Marketers Newsletter where you will find powerful concepts, killer strategies, useful tips and no bull business advice: http://www.milleniummarketers.com

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The registry of ru-domains reports, that the number of domain names registered in Russia’s national domain, the ru-domains, has increased 19.82% in the first half of 2004 to 256.356 ru-domains.

Ru-Center compares this to the growth of 2003, which was 16.02% for the first half of 2003.

The increase among ru-domains in Russia is coincident with the rising numbers of Russian Internet users. Ru-Center explains, that the weekly users numbered 5.9 million June 2004 , 1.4 million more than one year earlier. The number of Russian Internet users is expanding 30% a year.

ICANN accredited registrar Secura is accepting registrations of ru-domains by non-russian enterprises and private people. According to the experience of this registrar, the ru-domains owned by foreign registrants is growing rapidly (https://www.domainregistry.de/ru-domain.html).

About The Author

Hans Peter Oswald
CEO
ICANN accredited Registrar Secura

http://www.domainregistry.de/ru-domain.html; secura@domainregistry.de

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