The BBC Keep Cyber Squatters at Bay

Cybersquatting is a nasty business. Since the boom of the dot com age, some domain resellers have made their money by buying up rakes of domains – just for the sake of reselling them later on to businesses or individuals who need them, usually at a hefty profit. Business names, company names and brands are highly sought after, and resellers can make a handy profit if the business concerned can’t be without that particular domain name. The BBC have recently had to disclose their list of registered domain names that are non BBC.com or BBC.co.uk rooted – numbering at 154 different domain URLs. Many of the domains are based on phrases or titles of BBC programmes but the BBC have refused to go any further into their domain naming criteria, to avoid having domains snapped up in future by eager domain squatters.

The details came to light via a Freedom of Information request, which revealed that the BBC have been registering domains for some time. The domain names range from the bizarre bestmurders.co.uk to the downright strange watchagrownmanrot.co.uk. A good chunk of these domains relate to programme names or characters, and the BBC did not have to disclose all the details concerned – as it might spoil a plotline twist yet to come. An example of one such domain is badwolf.org.uk, and Dr. Who fans will be familiar with that term as the underground evil force which featured prominently throughout the Christopher Eccleston and David Tennant series.

Domain name is one of the defining factors in good organic search rankings – with recent changes in Google algorithms suggesting that new search index Caffeine may be taking root domain authority even more seriously than it ever has before.