The Sunrise B Registration Phase for .XXX allows trademark owners to protect their trademarks by blocking their names from being registered.This phase starts September 7th and runs until October 28th, 2011 (52 days).

Webnames.ca is accredited with ICM Registry to accept Sunrise B applications and pre-registrations for General Availability for the new, sponsored top-level .XXX domain and is the first registrar in Canada to participate. If you are a trademark owner or business that is not part of the adult industry, you should be aware of this new domain extension and how to protect your trademark or brand.

The ICM Registry has release a video "Wake Up to Sunrise" to help make sense of the Sunrise B phase.

Are you ready to register your trademark? Learn more about Sunrise B and .XXX on our website or Pre-Register by clicking below.

New Domain Names are Coming in 2012

Part of the mandate of ICANN is to make the internet representative and inclusive. Over the last ten years they have tried to pick new top level domain names that would best serve the internet and this centralized process saw the introduction of new domain extensions such as .biz, .info, .mobi, .pro, and .tel.  A new domain program has been in discussion for a number of years and the timelines for it are expected to be announced fairly soon. The new generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) paradigm will allow anyone to pay an application fee and so long as they fulfill certain criteria they will be able to run a domain name registry.

There are three main types of new gTLDs that are expected:

• Geographic
• Special Interest
• Corporate Interest  

For example it is expected that Paris, Berlin, and New York City (and others) will apply for .paris, .berlin and .nyc.  It is also expected that companies like Cannon, Nike and IBM will apply for and run .cannon, .nike and .ibm domain registries.   There are also special interest groups that are anticipated to apply for  .shop, .sport, .gay and .golf.  

There are two main differences that are expected with the new gTLD process.  First, it is expected that there will be many more new gTLD's introduced over a fairly short period of time.  Second, it is expected that some of these new gTLD's will fail. There has not been a failed gTLD yet and the new approach being taken by ICANN is that they will no longer try to pick the winners but will, instead, let the market decide.

ICANN Approves New gTLDs

This week ICANN formally approved the program it developed for creation of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) at its 41st open meeting in Singapore.

Applications for the first round of new gTLDs will be accepted by ICANN from January 12, 2012 through April 12, 2012, and ICANN's application fee will be $185,000.  ICANN will post the public portions of all gTLD applications within two weeks of April 12, 2010 and it will then undertake a review of each application to determine whether the proposed gTLD is appropriate for approval.

ICANN reports on its website that a global campaign will soon begin, to tell the world about this dramatic change in Internet names and to raise awareness of the opportunities afforded by new gTLDs.

For those interested in taking a closer look at the policies that will govern the launch of the new gTLD program, they can be found in ICANN's 352-page gTLD Applicant Guidebook.

We are gTLD Ready!

We want to let you know that Webnames.ca is ready for the coming change in the Internet and domain landscape. We have worked hard to ensure that our systems are fully capable of supporting the new gTLD's with the integrity and reliability that our customers have come to expect.

If you've recently received an official looking letter from the 'Domain Registry of Canada', we urge you to proceed with caution.

The "Domain Registry of Canada" is a company who has been in operation since 2001. The "Domain Registry of Canada" has no association with CIRA, or any government organization. They are also not related to Webnames.ca in any way. Their official looking letter (see images below) is an aggressive direct mail campaign aimed at trying to get you to transfer your domain away from your current registrar to them.

The letters claim the same thing. They tell you that your domain is about to expire and that you need to renew it immediatley; unfortunately, this is not the case. In the domain industry this practice is known as "Domain Slamming."


Domain Slamming is best described as a scam where a domain registrar attempts to trick customers of other companies into switching from their current registrar to the scamming one. They make it sound as though you are simply renewing your domain, while in reality you are signing paperwork, and sending money to effectively transfer your domain to them.

The overall look of the letter itself is very misleading. It looks similar to an official Government of Canada letter you may receive from time to time. The worst part about these letters is that they use scare tactics to convince customers they need to renew their domain, with lines like "Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the Web." Not only is it misleading, they tend to charge exorbitant amounts for domains, making you pay significantly more in the long run.

Make sure you keep a few things in mind if you receive a suspicious looking letter or email:

Do you recognize the sender, and is this a legitimate company?
If you don't recognize the company name, take a moment to look them up on the Better Business Bureau's Website. If they are a legitimate business with a good reputation than contacting them should be no problem. If they are scamming you, this website should give you a good sense of that.

Who is the Registrar of Record for your existing domain(s)?
If you receive a notification of renewal for one of your domains, be sure that it is coming from the registrar of record for that domain name. All registrations are handled by registrars and your Registrar of Record is who you initially registered your domain with. You can check your domains at http://www.webnames.ca/whois.asp or call your registrar.


Wondering how you can stop having these notices sent to you?
Check out Webnames Privacy Service which protects your information from being publicly visible and available to spammers and telemarketers. You will only receive official correspondence from Webnames.ca and the Registries and all other companies will be blocked out.

The main point to remember when receiving any communication is to read it fully and carefully (including the fine print) so you understand what the information is. Always deal with companies you know and trust.  Most importantly, if ever you are unsure as to the legitimacy of a notification, contact us at support@webnames.ca and we will be happy to review the notice you received.

Life is about to get a whole lot easier for those who own or manage .CA domain name portfolios.

 

On Tuesday October 12, 2010, CIRA (the Canadian Internet Registration Authority) will be migrating to an EPP (Extensible Provisioning Protocol) platform for .ca domains. 
This protocol is favoured and used by other domain extensions such as .COM, .NET, .ORG, etc.

How will the changes impact .CA owners? Keep reading to find out!

Simplified Administrative Contact Updates

Well, for starters, your CIRA account (used to approve administrative contact updates or to transfer a domain) will be a thing of the past. Moving forward, administrative contact changes will be done entirely through your registrar and will not require subsequent confirmation with CIRA making the entire process faster and easier to complete.

Easier .CA Transfers

Registrar transfers will now require an authorization code (called an EPP code) as well as the domain status to be either 'unlocked' or 'ok'. This authorization code can be obtained from the registrar you are transferring away from. After you have obtained the authorization or "EPP" code you can simply return to the Webnames.ca site to initiate your transfer. The transfer process will no longer be require you to login to your CIRA account to approve .CA transfer requests.  For those of you with large.CA domain portfolios, the above changes will make bulk .CA transfers much easier to process. 

Please note that CIRA will still continue to enforce Canadian Presence Requirements for registrants, though, as well as the other requirements of the registrant agreement.

Grandfathering of 3rd and 4th Level .CA Domain Names

One of the bigger changes though, is how the switch to EPP will affect 3rd and 4th level domains (like abc.bc.ca or xyz.on.ca). These domains will be maintained by CIRA, and registrants can continue to use and renew them; however, be warned that if these domains were to expire and lapse completely, you will no longer be able to re-register 3rd or 4th level extensions.

CIRA won't be supporting any new registrations of either provincial extensions, nor 4th level registrations of municipal domains (like town.nameoftown.bc.ca) as of October 12, 2010.

If you currently have a top level domain (for example, www.webnames.ca) and want to register your domain in the 3rd level (for example, www.webnames.bc.ca) you must do so before Tuesday, October 12, 2010.

To register a 3rd level domain name, please call Webnames.ca Customer Support toll free at 1-866-221-7878 or email your request to support@webnames.ca and one of our representatives can help process your registration.

Registration Tip! - Mobile internet use has made local search an important trend in search engine optimization. Registering your business name in the 3rd level may help your business rank better against your local and regional competitors!

Also, in the week leading up to the migration, CIRA will not be accepting any modifications to .CA domains that would typically require approval in one's CIRA account. That means that contact information updates, registrar transfers and registrant transfers will all be disabled starting October 4th, 2010.

To learn more about the upcoming changes at CIRA and the move to the new and improved .CA domain name registration system, go to cira.ca/ca-faq-10-12.

If you have any questions about the content of this blog post or the CIRA registration system transition, please email support@webnames.ca.

Every few years a new domain extension is released to the market place. This year there is a new domain that is designed for businesses - .CO, which is associated globally with the word "company," but can also represent corporations and commercial endeavors.

With the similarity to .COM or .CA for that matter, .CO could be easily confused and open to phishing, spamming and fraudulent activity. Imagine receiving an email from yourbank.co (rather than yourbank.com) to update your personal information. There will be a certain percentage of people who will get caught. So for this reason alone, large companies and trademark owners should definitely protect their brands and company names. 

Many people have also asked me want the relevance is to smaller businesses. With limited budgets, should a small business owner invest in a .CO if the owner feels their name is less of a target by spammers?

Here are some of the unique benefits of a .CO domain name:

• .CO is universally recognized as an abbreviation for company and can represent a corporation or other commercially focused endeavor

• .CO is meaningful, memorable and easy to remember

• .CO registration is open globally, giving small businesses the chance to get the name they always wanted

Some savvy businesses are purchasing names that combine their profession and geography (such as SeattleDoctor.co or VancouverBuilder.co). This will enhance their position online, making it easier for customers to find them. I personally feel that it is important for all businesses large or small to protect your online brand. The pain of losing your name to another company, especially a competitor, could be highly damaging to a business of any size. If small businesses can't afford the $275, wait until July 20 when the General Availability stage opens up and the price drastically reduces to less than $30/year.

How to Get a .CO Name

.CO names are currently available from Webnames.ca through a process called .CO Landrush. This is a limited period of time in which people have the opportunity to reserve names before they are generally available on July 20, 2010.

Webnames.ca will be taking .CO Landrush registrations until July 13th.

During .CO Landrush, if you are the only applicant for the name, you are informed around July 20 or shortly thereafter and are awarded the name. If more than one customer reserves the same name, those customers will be entered into an auction and the name awarded to the highest bidder. If you do not win your .CO name at auction, you will receive a refund on all fees, less $10 for processing so there's very little risk even when applying for very generic names.
 
Webnames.ca is offering a .CO Landrush price of US$275 which is the lowest in the industry (compare to GoDaddy at $299).

More information about the new .CO extension and the Landrush application process can be found on our .CO Landrush page. Here you can search the .CO WHOIS to find out what domains are available before you call our customer support at 1-866-221-7878 to apply for your names. Good luck!

Typosquatting is the practice of intentionally registering domain names that are misspellings of website addresses and profiting from it by trying to sell the name, or capitalizing on its traffic through Google ads and/or selling products/services not related to the original brand.

Many large businesses protect their brands by registering possible misspellings of their trademarks and brands but not all of them do an adequate job of it. Smaller businesses typically don't think of such protective measures until it is too late [read our previous article, Cornering the Market for your Brands].

A recently published paper available at Benedelman.org, Measuring the Perpetrators and Funders of Typosquatting, by Tyler Moore and Benjamin Edelman from Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences describes how pervasive typosquatting is and who exactly benefits from it:

At least 938 000 typosquatting domains target the top 3264 .COM sites, and we [the authors] crawl more than 285 000 of these domains to analyze their revenue sources. We find that 80% are supported by pay-per-click ads, often advertising the correctly spelled domain and its competitors. Another 20% include static redirection to other sites.

Further analysis by the authors indicates:

57% of typo sites include Google pay-per-click ads. Combining our observations with financial reports and others' estimates, we conclude that Google's revenue from typosquatting on the top 100,000 sites is $497 million per year.

Benjamin Edelman summarizes his findings on a recent blog on Circle ID.

Whether the numbers are accurate or not, what the paper highlights is that "typosquatting" is a real problem for companies and brand owners.

Webnames.ca's Corporate and Managed Services Division can help with a comprehensive account review to ensure your brand is properly protected. Contact our Corporate and Managed Services department by corporate@webnames.ca or toll free 1-866-470-6820 to schedule a review or to request a our recent whitepaper on the topic.  

In the mix of things as you need to market your business and promote your brand, domain names are inexpensive and they cost a fraction of a battered reputation or the legal expenses incurred if someone registers your name and uses it to drive traffic to their website or to post objectionable material. For most businesses, a single lost customer each year could account for the price of multiple domain registrations.

 Below are recommendations from our Developing an Effective Domain Strategy whitepaper. To request a copy of the complete whitepaper, please email corporate@webnames.ca.

Critical Domain Areas for Businesses

All Product Names & Trademarks

For example, Kellogg's has the various cereal names registered and Proctor and Gamble has their entire line of products from "Crest" to "Palmolive" registered.

Taglines, Straplines, Slogans, Mottos, Signatures

Nike owns "justdoit.com", Apple owns "thinkdifferent.com," Volkswagen owns "driverswanted.com," Dell owns "easyasdell.com," McDonald's owns "imlovinit.com," Molson Coors owns "tastesgreatlessfilling.com" and Telus owns "thefutureisfriendly.ca" (and .com).

Many companies actually neglect to do this only to have their slogan catch on and become one of the most visible pieces of their corporate identity, for example Mazda's "Zoom zoom." Even if you're just testing out a new tagline or slogan - register it.

Current & Future Marketing Campaigns

Contests, promotions and campaigns typically have their own landing page on a company's website, marketing material and advertising spots. Registering a short domain name like "yourproductpromo.com" or yourproductcontest.com can help people remember your campaign and find the details easily on the internet.

Future Products and Services

Protect all your products or services that are being developed or are currently in the pipeline for future launch. Use Webnames Privacy Service to protect the registrant information so competitors in your industry don't find out about your upcoming initiatives and products

Blog, Facebook, Events

Register a short name for your blog. If you use Wordpress or other blog applications rather than yourname.wordpress.com/... it looks more professional to get yournameblog.com.

Many companies are also now registering their associated domains and pointing them to their social media sites eg. yourcompanyfacebook.com and yourcompanyfacebook.ca

If you host, sponsor or participate in an annual event or charitable initiative that you promote or fundraise for, you should also the event name as a domain, for example "WebnamesCanaryDerby.ca" or "CanadaSafewayFoundation.org".

We also strongly advocate, if your budget permits, registering common typos and misspellings of all of the above.

Request the whitepaper by emailing corporate@webnames.ca