Domain Name Confusion

Internet domain name confusion is affecting more and more businesses as time goes on. The problem is that as more people turn to the Internet to promote their products and services and establish an online presence, more websites pop up and more domain names are being used. What you end up with are dozens of websites that appear to be the same, and their names only have slight differences.

Sometimes this is done purposely by a competitor looking to feed off of the success of a preexisting website. If a very popular website was www.joestoolsupply.com, a competitor might want to try to get some of the traffic and customers from that website by creating www.joestoolsupply.net, or another similar name. What you end up with is Internet domain name confusion, which can hinder your success.

Many other times this isn't done purposely at all but is done out of necessity. With so many millions of domain names purchased, the choices for your own domain name are often quite limited. That means you will likely end up with something that is similar to several already existing websites.

In the above example, you may not want to have a similar domain as somebody else, but you may see that your first choice, www.joestoolsupply.com is already taken. So then you might end up using www.joestoolsupplies.com or www.joestoolshed.com as an alternative. Even though you didn't intend to have a similar name as someone else did to try to pass yourself off as them to consumers, you still ended up with a similar name.

To try to limit Internet domain name confusion you can try several different things. One of the most common is to buy up many similar domain names to your core domain when you already purchase it. If the owner of www.joestoolsupply.com also bought the "supplies" and .net version when he purchased the main domain name, then his competitors, whether intentionally or out of necessity, could not purchase a name that is extremely similar to his. This is a preventative, defensive strategy that many website business owners are taking now so that they keep all of the traffic and all of the customers that they work hard to create.

As the owner of a website, you may never be able to completely circumvent Internet domain name confusion. You may be able to limit the likelihood of it occurring however. You can do this by purchasing similar domain names to your main name so that nobody else can acquire them. You can also do it by thoroughly researching your choice before you make your purchase, so you can see what the existing competition is already like. With these steps, you can minimize the possible negative consequences of this confusion as much as possible.