Domain dominance

[LJHopkins]

I've just started to work for a company who've purchased masses of domains with every conceivable permutation based on all their products with every extension possible e.g .biz  . eu. .net (including .co.uk and .com of course).

I have two questions:

1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?

2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?

[ClaytonJ]

Lisa

It is a personal decision.  There is no right or wrong answer.

Big companies - sometimes buy them and do not use them in any shape nor form, but keep from competitors. Smaller companies usually don't as it is a costs issue.

My experience is most competitors do not understand their own digital channel let alone, snapping up similar names of competitors...

[LJHopkins]

Is it worth keeping any domains that are similar to our brand/products? Why pass that opportunity to our competitors?

[EGOL]

I would let them expire and buy beer with the savings.

Let the competitors spend their time and money on them.

[ClaytonJ]

I echo Andy above.

On the domains I would run them all through "open site explorer" &/or "majestic" to ensure you are not giving up anything of any value.

I would also be careful if they have no value, and are 301'ed to your main site, that could look spammy to google. So if you do choose to hold them, even though they have no value, so held for brand protection sake, do not 301 them unless it could be a traffic referral domain.

Hope that assists.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Lisa,

1. Is it worth keeping all these (they want to add more) domains or let them expire?

If they are keeping them to help ensure brand security, then this is very popular and no harm in keeping them.

2. All the purchased domains are online - is there any point (they redirect with a 301)?

There is probably not a lot of point in all of them being live and pointing towards the main site as there will be no SEO benefit in doing this. If the sites were live and each had a site on there, it would be a different story and one that would end in a penalty.

If they are hoping to gain any SEO benefit from doing this, then they will be wasting their time. By all means they can buy them, but if what they have is delivering nothing beneficial (and I suspect they aren't), then I would just take them all down. It is more common to have a .co.uk and .com (and perhaps a few others) pointing to one key domain to capture traffic that types it wrong, but outside of this, it's a bit of a dead duck.

-Andy