If one has a 'domain.com' registered is it necessary to register it for 'domain.com.cn'

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Not sure if this is the right place to ask this but its a start.

The owner of my company recently got one of those chinese domain resistration spam emails. I have calmed his concerns regarding the fact that the email is spam and is of no concern to us but he still wants to know if our company’s domain name is at risk.

Here then is my question. If one has a registered domain name, ex. mydomain.com, does one need to additional register mydomain.com.cn, mydomain.cn, etc? It would seem that this might be a rather daunting process given all the possible country extensions.

My apologies if this is a stupid question. I understand enough to know that we had to register our domain name but I really don’t understand the whole domain name process.

Thanks for any help and additional information you all might want to share.

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Although internationally operating companies often register their domain name with multiple top level domains (country extensions), there is certainly no obligation to do so!

But of course, if you only register mydomain.com, someone else will be free to register mydomain.ca or mydomain.co.uk. In many cases, that will not be a problem, but if they use it for the same kind of business, they might lure customers away from you, and if they use it for questionable purposes, it might hurt your reputation.

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Although internationally operating companies often register their domain name with multiple top level domains (country extensions), there is certainly no obligation to do so!

But of course, if you only register mydomain.com, someone else will be free to register mydomain.ca or mydomain.co.uk. In many cases, that will not be a problem, but if they use it for the same kind of business, they might lure customers away from you, and if they use it for questionable purposes, it might hurt your reputation.

Thank you Hans. It is as I was guessing, it is only a problem if the counter registering entity is in the same area of business or, as you suggested, their purpose or actions are of a nature that might harm our reputation.

I will pass this along. I suspect that this means I will be registering a few new domain names in the not too distant future.

Ah well, at least I will be busy.

Thanks again for your assistance.

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But of course, if you only register mydomain.com, someone else will be free to register mydomain.ca or mydomain.co.uk. In many cases, that will not be a problem, but if they use it for the same kind of business, they might lure customers away from you, and if they use it for questionable purposes, it might hurt your reputation.

My understanding is that the Registrars who maintain the domains are quite sympathetic to established companies who find themselves battling with people buying up similar domain names either to hold them hostage, or to pass themselves off as someone else.

Look out for the mydomain.info tld as well.

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There are undoubtedly many equivalents to this UK-based domain search in the US, but if your boss wants to get enthusiastic he could be forking out $lots on an annual/biannual/etc basis! (Try to avoid getting involved in domain renewal…!)

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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Nice! I see that http://www.batcher.com is taken, but http://www.batcher.co.uk is yours for the taking!

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Nice! I see that http://www.batcher.com is taken, but http://www.batcher.co.uk is yours for the taking!

Similarly for http://www.hans.me, but with a transplant you could have http://www.hans.me.uk!

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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My understanding is that the Registrars who maintain the domains are quite sympathetic to established companies who find themselves battling with people buying up similar domain names either to hold them hostage, or to pass themselves off as someone else.

The registrar might be sympathetic, but they are not going to break their contract with the current registrant on your account. You will have to pursue dispute procedures if you want to take the domain away, and this can be fairly expensive.

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If one has a registered domain name, ex. mydomain.com, does one need to additional register mydomain.com.cn, mydomain.cn, etc? It would seem that this might be a rather daunting process given all the possible country extensions.

It’s a good question. There are your normal business needs: being easy to find where customers are looking. And then there are your defensive business needs: denying others the ability to harm the company by being found in those places and using them against your interests. (There also are legitimate coexisting users in many cases.) So you may end up with more than one domain even in .com (e.g., company name, product name). But as you point out, this can quickly reach an uneconomical level if you feel the need to register in multiple jurisdictions, or in multiple variations (e.g., with “sucks” after each name).

To get the global picture of where your domain has been registered, you can use corporate-oriented services like MarkMonitor, NetNames, SafeNames, and CSC Corporate Domains. Of course, their goal in providing searches is to get your registration business, and their sales people can be quite persistent…

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I have had belconnen-subs.com.au – I received a letter (from Australia, not China) at my other store in Belconnen offering me the domain belconnen-subs.com . I did a double take before I realised that it was not the au site. (My organisation does not like fanchisees to use their brand name in the url).

My wife works for a travel accommodation web site- http://www.takeabreak.com.au . One day I made a mistake and left out the first letter “a”. I was redirected to a rival’s website. When I pointed this out to then, TakeABreak were able to claim that url from the rival site.

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My wife works for a travel accommodation web site- http://www.takeabreak.com.au . One day I made a mistake and left out the first letter “a”. I was redirected to a rival’s website. When I pointed this out to then, TakeABreak were able to claim that url from the rival site.

You may have a problem with http://www.takeabreak.co.uk/%5B/b%5D%5B/url%5D, which is a Uk ‘magazine’…

BATcher

Plethora means a lot to me.

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You may have a problem with http://www.takeabreak.co.uk/, which is a Uk ‘magazine’…

And http://www.takeabreak.nl is redirected to the site of a Dutch travel agency.

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And http://www.takeabreak.nl is redirected to the site of a Dutch travel agency.

… which, when you click on the flag for the English translation, gives you a page which says “English translation not available”.

At least MrsW’s mob has “www.takeabreak.com”, if not “www.takebreak.com”.

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