MarkMonitor recently conducted its third installment of ‘office hours’: a series of interactive, Q&A focused webinars highlighting the most pressing topics in domain management today.
The MarkMonitor™ office hours series, following a university office hours model, provides MarkMonitor customers the ability to ask questions on a variety of domain-related topics with real-time answers from MarkMonitor in-house experts and industry colleagues. To encourage candor, questions are anonymized and the sessions are not recorded.
This office hours session focused on domain blocking: what it is, how it works and how companies can use it to their advantage. For this webinar, our in-house specialists were joined by industry-leading experts from the largest blocking providers who shared the features and benefits of their various blocking services. Here are a few valuable takeaways.
- Domain blocking is a powerful brand protection tool that is still relatively new. Because the practice of domain blocking is still evolving, it is currently underutilized. However, it provides many benefits, enabling brand owners to prevent brand infringement cost-effectively in a large and growing number of top-level domains (TLDs). Crucially, blocking allows brand owners to achieve this without taking on the portfolio bloat and cost historically associated with defensive domain registrations.
- A brand’s reputation is vital to protecting brand loyalty, attracting new customers and growing the business. Unfortunately, it is also increasingly challenging for brand owners to maintain that reputation online. This inability to protect reputation can negatively impact both a brand’s credibility and its value, which is why domain blocking is so important.
- Despite being a relatively new concept, more and more brands are recognizing the value of domain blocking in helping to safeguard domains from infringement. A relatively straightforward practice, domain blocking prevents third parties from registering a range of domains that match a brand’s trademarked name. Brands that use domain blocking effectively protect themselves and their customers from fraudulent activity, in turn protecting brand reputation.
- It’s important to note that domain blocking is separate from an active registration, meaning the block cannot be used for a website, redirect or email. The block will cover a range of selected TLDs that include the brand’s name. This prevents third-party registration of those selected domains, but block-holding brand owners can override their own block and convert it into an active registration at any time.
- Domain blocking is a cost-effective way to achieve peace of mind, knowing your brand and customers are protected from nefarious activity and that customer experience is given an extra level of protection online. Without domain blocking, brand owners would have to spend large sums of money to register the domains that they want in order to block others from using them. Meanwhile, not necessarily using all those domains leads to a bloated portfolio.
While domain blocking is still evolving, we’re encouraged to see many registries embracing this concept. It’s also reassuring to know that innovative new ways of protecting brands online – such as domain blocking – are still emerging and evolving.
Thank you to our panelists for taking the time to join this ‘office hours’ session and sharing their knowledge and insights with us.
As the registrar for many of the most visited domain names on the internet, MarkMonitor tracks industry developments to help customers make the best decisions. For a copy of the prepared background slides from the session or to get in touch to discuss domain blocking, please contact us here.
