ProvidentHost Blog

Today blog is a short notice about domain squatting.

Have you ever heard of a term domain squatting before? Sometimes it is referred as “cybersquatting” or “typosquatting”. It means using a famous domain as one of the part of your domain or choosing a domain name that is similar to famous domains. For examples are: 1microsoft67.info, halo2player.com, freehotmail.net, genuinewindowsvista.com, and windowshome.info.

Now, you might ask, why would people choose a domain like that?

Mostly because they want to hitch hike on the original domain strength. When people type certain phrase on search engine, they hope the domain will come out ranking quite high because it also has the famous keywords.

Is this a good practice?

Apparently, that is not always the case!

Some webmasters are getting sued by those giant companies because of their trademark infringement. Microsoft on Monday August 21, 2006 filed 2 civil lawsuits in federal court according this matter.

Can you imagine getting sued by a multi billion dollar company? I wish you a lot of luck if you are in that position.

To be safe, stay away from this domain squatting practice. Choose a unique domain name. Do not hitch hike on someone else’s fame.