Note: This article was originally published in The Greeley Tribune, Sunday Business Section, January 25, 2004

Web Wise

Why you should carefully think about your domain name before you buy it

By Lori Gama-White
Buying a domain name is one of the first steps toward establishing a Web presence for your business. Seems simple enough: you just choose a name that's easy to remember or use your own name and buy it, right?

But unless you arm yourself with some information you could end up choosing a name that could possibly spawn a court battle.

Take Mike Rowe for example. Mike Rowe registered his domain name for his new Web site design business last August. Last November, Microsoft Corporation's lawyers notified Rowe that he was infringing on Microsoft's name.

"Since my name is Mike Rowe, I thought it would be funny to add 'soft' to the end of it," said Rowe, a 17-year-old computer geek and Grade 12 student in Victoria, British Columbia, AP reported.

Microsoft Corp. and its attorneys "have demanded that he give up his domain name," the Vancouver Province newspaper reported Sunday. Rowe asked for compensation for having to give up the domain and was offered $10.00 by the software giant. Then Rowe asked for $10,000. Microsoft's attorneys shot back with "a 25-page letter accusing him of trying to force Microsoft into giving him a large settlement," according to AP Monday.

It'll be interesting to see how this David and Goliath story plays out because some of the laws regarding domain names and trademark infringement have yet to be established. Mike Rowe owns the domain name "mikerowesoft.com" but Microsoft Corp. says it is too similar to its own domain name (microsoft.com) and company name. After much media attention, "Microsoft Corp. indicated on Tuesday it might have overreacted," Reuters reported. In the meantime, Rowe reaps in the explosive traffic to his Web site and is inundated with new clients.

When you get ready to buy your own domain name, do some research online to make sure the name is not already registered or trademarked by another company. Do this by visiting one of the thousands of domain registrar companies that can be found online. Some domain registrars allow a wildcard search of all current, deleted or expired domains in the Whois database, in which you can look up registration data.

Yearly prices for domains range from around $7-$35. Whichever domain registrar company you buy from, be sure to read their privacy policy so your contact information doesn’t end up being sold.

• Keep it under 25 characters and try for the ". com" if you can get it.
• If you use hyphens (search engines list you higher if you have keywords in your domain name) be sure to register the same name without the hyphens, use the non-hyphen one in all your marketing materials and point it to your web site (a re-direct can take “yourinternetmarketing.com” to "your-internet-marketing.com" ).
• Make certain that you are the owner of your domain name. You never know, some day, another company might want to buy it from you. One man in Florida recently sold his domain "men.com" to an entertainment industry company for $1.3 million.
• Don’t confuse your future customers with a domain that’s different from your company name. The keyword navigation and Internet search services company, CommanName, studied users searching online and reported that "71 per cent said they had switched to a rival company after failing to find the one they were looking for."