Awhile back, I bought all of the TLD's for my home business' name, which is a registered trademark. I'm now trying to trim down the number of domains I own to cut annual costs (since I have something like 80 domains), and I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to drop the .biz, .ws and .mobi domains I have for my business (they're about 2 years old, each, I think)? I never planned to use them, but just kept them for safety purposes. Should I care if I drop these domains and someone picks them up? I just hope this wouldn't be something I'd hate myself for doing, in the future.
in my opinion I would keep the major ones, if you already have them .ws and .mobi I would ditch, but for less than $10 per year I would keep .biz or .net etc just my 2 cents
you should not do that... as anyone else can put up the tld's and stand in front of you with your business name... as you know... these days how easy for some one to bring traffic to his website..
we dropped the .biz and .info for our business name during some spring cleaning and a competitor registered them and pointed to their site right away. They don't show up in the SERPs though so I don't know if they actually get any traffic because of it.
thanks for the opinions...I guess I might as well keep them, but the .ws is looking like a waste of money. By the way, if a competitor registers a domain and forwards it to their site, can't you send them a cease & desist?
Ummm if his name is trademarked and a competitor is using his trademark to their advantage, you can certainly try to pursue legal action against them. Especially since if your domain expires and someone picks it up the date on the whois will show created AFTER your trademark went through. Get it? Pre-trademark domain registration is sometimes fine as long as you don't put up advertisements/anything that relates to the trademark owners "niche" but if it is reg'd after the trademark has been approved there is a problem.... assuming the name is NOT generic.
.ws is a total waste of money. In fact, that's what it stands for... WaSte. At least that's the word on the streets in Apia.