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Otherwise known as ‘Cyber Squatting’, domain squatting is the act of registering, trafficking in or using a domain name with bad intent (or without authorisation) to profit from the good name of a organisations trademark, brand or identity.
This can commonly be a URL with a different domain extension (e.g. ‘.co.uk’ and ‘.com’), or a misspelling of a URL (e.g. www.gogole.com).
Phonetic Misspellings
Take your domain name, and check it for possible mispronunciations of your website. For example, a phonetic mispronunciation of “google” could be “googol”. You get the idea.
Keystroke Misspellings
Type your URL (without the www. or .co.uk / .com bit) into the following tool. This will help you create a list of possible URLs from the most common typos. You can never be 100% thorough with this, and frankly probably wouldn’t want to register them all anyway due to cost.
http://www.selfseo.com/domain_typo_generator.php
For “google” it returned us a list of 50 possible misspellings. You can bet Google own them all.
Historic Variations of Your Company Name
Check for all historic versions and variations of your company’s name. For example “WH Smith” is also known as “WH Smiths”, so both urls, www.whsmith.co.uk and www.whsmiths.co.uk (plus other domain extensions) should be checked.
Hyphenated URLs
Take your URL, and place hyphens (dashes) between the words. For example: www.mysiteisgreat.com could also be squatted on at www.my-site-is-great.com.
Abbreviations
Does your company have a common abbreviation? A company like British Home Stores is also known as BHS. Do you have the word “Street” in your name that could be abbreviated to “St”. You get the idea. |