JuliannaLast year we blogged about how Bradgelina beat cybersquaters to the punch by proactively registering variations of their newborn twins’ names as domains. Unfortunately for newly famous songbird Susan Boyle, cyberquatters got to susanboyle.co.uk first.
The name of the Britain’s Got Talent star was registered by someone else on April 10 2009, one day before her jaw-dropping performance aired on television and exploded onto the internet. The WHOIS record for the susanboyle.co.uk is private.
As of today, Ms. Boyle’s performance has been viewed more than 34 million times. That’s approximately 1.2 times per Canadian. I have no doubt the public interest in her and her story is now generating massive amounts of type-in-traffic for both susanboyle.co.uk and susanboyle.com which is owned by a Texas based portrait artist.
While I would never wag a finger at lovely Susan Boyle for not being internet-savvy enough to register her name – before becoming a sweetheart to millions of people around the world, she lived a fairly solitary life with her cat and volunteered at a local parish – what excuse could the producers of Britain’s Got Talent and ITV (the network behind the show) possibly have for missing the boat?
If you are unfamiliar with the timeline of Susan Boyle’s rise to unconventional superstardom, her audition in Glasgow before the Britain’s Got Talent judges and audience took place in January (watch the video on You Tube). The network and show’s producers had months of lead time to avoid this flub. Unfortunately though, it’s Susan Boyle who loses out. Instead of people finding accurate, approved information about Susan Boyle, susanboyle.co.uk goes to a fansite that’s peppered with bingo and adwords ads.
Talent agents, managers and artists take note – keep traffic that should be yours and avoid legal wrangling by registering the names of your talent before they rocket to stardom.