[Jason]

Adam Senour had an excellent blog post yesterday on cybersquatting. The sad thing about this practice is that, in a lot of cases, it is preventable. Probably in just as many, it isn’t. But Adam admits that he himself has allowed his domains to expire and fall victim to cybersquatting. The registrants who take these domain names are unscrupulous at best. The Web community needs to figure out a way to put a stop to this.

But aside from the politics, one other way that cybersquatting occurs is when a popular domain name is mirrored by a domain name that is close, but not quite. In other words, if you own thisismydomain.com then the cybersquatter may register this-is-my-domain.com. Usually, however, it happens in the reverse. A domain name owner will register the hyphenated version of the domain name and the cybersquatter will register the unhyphenated version. Unwitting searchers who can’t remember to put the dashes in the domain will type in what they think is the domain name into their browser windows and go to the wrong website.

This type of cybersquatting can be prevented by the domain name owner purchasing all domain names that are similar enough to be confused with the one they own. Hyphenated and non-hyphenated versions of the domain name, plural and singular versions of the name (ie. mydomain.com and mydomains.com), etc. If there is any way that a visitor might confuse your domain name then you should purchase the alternative version before a cybersquatter does then point that domain name to your actual Web URL. It could save you a lot of headaches in the long run.

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