At the time of writing, there are currently over 85 different domain name extensions available for people to register.
So do you go off and register every single one?
Its not really necessary to register every single one but you should ensure that if you are in an area of industry that is competitive or at least in an area of the marklet where there is comptitive jealousy, you should at least have the main domain name extensions registered and secured to your company.
In my professional opinion, these are the most important domain extensions that you should endevour to secure.
– .com
– .net
– .info
– .org
– .co.uk – if you have a UK market
– .eu – if your market is in Europe
– .es – if your business is in Spain or your market is in Spain
Why do you need to register so many different domain extensions?
Because your competitors, enemies and ex partners will register them! They will do this to profit from you or cause you invconvenince and loss of potential revenue by directing people to their site rather than yours.
Once someone else has registered a domain like your own, it can be a difficult and quite often an expensive process to get the domain name back.
For the .uk extension, the UK has a fairly straight forward process which only costs a few hundred GBP but that is if the respondent does not appeal against your claim. If the respondent appeals and wants to challenge you, then you are looking at 2,000 GBP.
For other domains such as .com or ,net, the costs to challenge domain ownership a domain squatter can start at $2500 – $5000.
In most cases you are not guaranteed a successful result but like a court of law, as long as you present a reasonable case, the panel that awards the decisons may look favourably on you.
I have recently myself successfully been awarded a positive domain name decision after fighting a cyber squatter who registered craigedmonds.co.uk. The process took approximately 2 months and because the respondent did not make any appeals at all and I submitted the proper evidence, it cost me 250 GBP.
However, like most legal pursuits, it can also be a bit stressful so to save yourself time and more expenses further down the line, its better to get the domains resgitsred and in your safe keeping for the small domain fees.