Avoiding similar Web domain names
Howard Lake | 17 October 2003 | News
Third Sector this week reports on two similar sounding domain names for ‘alternative gift’ catalogues for charity. Those aren’t the only similar domain names.
Third Sector focuses on the launch of the Charities Advisory Trust’s catalogue at www.goodgifts.org in September 2003. It suggested that this name was similar to that used by World Vision’s alternative gift catalogue, run for four years at www.greatgifts.org.
There are certainly further similarities between the two online catalogues’ approaches, although Charities Advisory Trust argues they are different in that their catalogue is aimed at shoppers rather than donors.
Advertisement
Given the importance of Web domain names, this development reinforces the importance of researching existing and similar domain names if a charity is to have any hope of developing its brand.
But the two catalogues are not the only charity domain names to appear confusing similar. Try visiting the following and then see if you can remember what each site offered in 10 minutes’ time:
- http://www.charitycards.org
- http://www.charitycard.org
- http://www.charitycards.co.uk
- http://www.charitycard.co.uk
We’ll help you out. One is owned by a national charity, another a greetings card company, another a non-profit business with 95 charity members, and another by a bank. Two of them incidentally offer very similar services of personalised corporate Christmas cards.
All this goes to show that even if you are quick off the mark with a good and unique domain name, you should protect your brand by buying up similar names and the various top level domain suffixes. However, with so many good domain names bought up now, your only hope is to advertise heavily to promote your domain name or develop an unrivalled reputation for quality or service.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.