"Internet Keywords" - What is it and How do you get one?

[digitalv]

I've been getting messages lately from a Chinese domain registrar saying that someone has been trying to register mydomain in a bunch of foreign TLD's, and the "Internet Keyword" based on my brand.

Apparently their standard procedure before registering a domain is to seek out any potential copyright infringement and notify the .com owner that someone has asked to do a registration, and offer you the chance to do it first. So I went ahead and registered all of the international domains (using a different registrar than the one that contacted me, just in case it was a scam), but I'm not sure on this "Internet Keyword" thing. I'm assuming that's the thing where when you type something into the address bar it finds a page and takes you there, but doesn't that just use a search engine and take you to the first result? Or is there actually a separate domain-esque registration system for these one-word deals?

[bill]

You fell for their scam?
It's a spam campaign tactic. They lie to you to tell you that some fictitious company is trying to register your trademarked names. Then they list a few domains with that same keyword. I would never do business with a company that approached me like that.

This is not a service. It's borderline fraud.

My advice would be to avoid any company that approaches you like this. If you're interested in the domains find a registrar you know or have done business with. Unfortunately some of the registrars involved in this underhanded practice are also CNNIC accredited registrars [cnnic.cn].

Internet Keyword

In China they have a system that works like the old RealNames system. You can buy keywords and users can access your site without entering a URL in the address bar. There's more info on the CNNIC site [cnnic.cn].

[nomis5]

But, the op says he registered the names with a registrar that he / she chose, not one anything to do with the email. So how does the originator of the email benefit?

[bill]

Oops. Sorry about that. I must have read that too fast. You did the right thing using another registrar.

That Chinese domain registration scam really annoys me, as you can probably tell. I get so many of those mails, and I hate to see people get taken by these schemes.

[digitalv]

It did get me thinking about protecting those domains though, I'm just not sure about the keyword. If it's just in China I don't really care, but if it's "net wide" then I might want to act on that. I found this site called snapnames which is U.S. based, but I'm not sure if that's the same thing or not.

[bill]

Internet Keywords

That particular keyword system is targeted at China and you need to be using their software plug-in for it to work. It is available net-wide if you have the software.

SnapNames

That's a domain back-ordering service. They try to acquire domain names whose registration has lapsed.

[digitalv]

Sorry not snapnames, snapwords

[bill]

Ah, that makes a bit of a difference. ;)

They're going to run into the same issues that RealNames did. They rely on a browser plug-in to operate. When Microsoft dropped IE native support for RealNames their entire business model tanked. There have been many companies that have tried to emulate the RealNames model, but they're all running into the same adoption problems because none of the major browser makers will include their software by default. Internet Keyword sellers are destined for marginal adoption in this scenario.