The bulk of corporate domain portfolios largely consist of defensive registrations which often include common misspellings, product names, and abbreviations in countries where they may not even be doing business. More than ever, with the launch of new generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) expected to occur next year, companies are now taking a hard look at their defensive holdings and asking themselves whether or not they really need all of these registrations.

There are a number of methods that can be used to “Right Size” portfolios including focusing on: exact-match registrations in top TLDs, ccTLDs where products/services are actively marketed, and IDNs where existing non-Latin trademarks are also registered.

However, the single most important factor in making decisions about what to keep or drop comes down to traffic. Understanding just how much traffic is being generated by defensive registrations is essential for maximizing the value of domain portfolios.

Unfortunately, many companies are not directing traffic from defensive registration to live content.

Why let these valuable assets go unused?

Determine where you want domain names to point. For example, if an Internet user types in one of your domain names, where do you want that user to go? Should it resolve to a main corporate site, an e-commerce site or an HR site? Consider matching foreign-language domain names (IDNs) to language-specific websites, or product domain names to specific URLs.

Redirects can be managed easily through the use of standard Web Forwarding Solutions which should also provide valuable statistics to help you understand the traffic generated from these defensive registrations. Information garnered can also be useful in rationalizing portfolios, adding domains where needed or dropping domains with little or no traffic.