A number of clients have contacted us because they’ve received an email from an unrecognised company saying that they’ve been approached and asked to register some domains similar to theirs.

For example, we would receive an email saying that we are being given notice that a request for site-street.jp, site-street.es, site-street.fr, etc. are wanted by someone but, out of courtesy because we have site-street.com, we’re being asked if we would like those domains instead.

Often a timeframe is given, something like “we will register these for our customer in 7 days unless we hear back from you”.

So, why are they doing this?

They are trying to make you want those domains, even if just to stop someone else having them. But, they are not of any real use to you otherwise you would have registered them anyway. And they will be charging inflated prices for them. We’ve seen approaches like this quoting £400 to get the domain instead of their customer.

You need to keep everything in context. There are now a huge amount of TLDs (Top Level Domains like .com, .net, .co.uk, .org.uk, etc.) so buying them all would cost you a serious amount of investment. And they would need renewing in order to keep them. You don’t need a domain on Spain’s TLD unless you are specifically marketing in Spain. Not having those domains will always mean someone else could get them. But that’s not worried you before so why should it now?

In my view, consider any domains which you don’t have but might want and check if they are available. Then, if you want them, register them through your regular domain supplier (which could be us) at the proper rate. Don’t feel pressured into buying what you don’t want or need, especially at a much higher price.