Do you need a domain name strategy?

Any organisation with or planning to have an Internet presence should adopt and exercise a centralised approach on planning the acquisition, management and use of appropriate domain names.

A domain name is intellectual property and accordingly may have both financial and strategic value.

The registration of a .gov.uk domain is undertaken within clearly detailed guidelines. An individual department or agency may wish, as part of a defensive strategy, to consider acquiring other, closely related host names, for example, in the .org, info, .com Top Level Domains. This may reduce the risk of similar domain names being registered by third parties, thereby leading to confusion amongst Web users. This also reduces the genuine risk of third parties acquiring names for vexatious purposes.

When registering any name you should be aware of the need to avoid infringing existing trademarks and third party business names. If you wish to consider registering a domain name as a trademark, refer to the Patents Office website at www.patent.gov.uk/about/ippd/issues/domain.htm . Company names can be checked online using the Company Names Index from Companies House at http://ws2info.companieshouse.gov.uk/info/ .

Web managers also should be aware of ‘cybersquatting’, ‘typosquatting’ and ‘cyber smearing’. Cybersquatting is seen as a practice of buying up domain names that reflect the names of existing organisations with the intention of selling the names back to you or for using them for ‘bad faith’ purposes, such as, passing off. Typosquatting is a name infringement that relies upon the common misspelling of your domain name. Cyber smearing is where anonymous authors set up websites that spread alternative, false or disparaging information that dilutes your own Web identity. This particular practice has seen a remarkable increase over the past few years.

Managing your namespace

A small number of three and four letter acronyms may be considered as ‘household names’, for example, BBC, HSE, ITV, OFTEL, No10. However, to the broad majority of users acronyms are meaningless. Web managers should encourage a ‘user focused’ approach and register accordingly. For example, host names like education.gov.uk, environment.gov.uk and defence.gov.uk may be considered intuitive and unambiguous to a general user.

The use of different levels of directories and sub-directories in the construction of the website will result in the URL becoming longer or shorter. For example, if there were a sub-directory within ‘webguidelines’ called ‘frames’ the URL would look like this:

www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/webguidelines/frames/index.htm

The naming of directories should therefore be carefully considered. For example, your top-level directories may reflect organisational brands, projects or the editorial focus of the website. They should also be unambiguous when spoken and easy to type. As with domain names be aware of the need to avoid infringing trademarks and third party business names. Using the names of well-known people may also present difficulties.

The Welsh Language Board advise that Departments required to provide a service to the public in Wales should, where there is a difference between their English and Wales names, consider registering Welsh language domain names.