Domain audit
We begin with preparing a detailed audit of client's domain portfolio in order to present them a clear overview of the general status of their domains, supplemented by answers to the following questions:
Which domains does client hold?
Domain name registration date and expiration date
Who owns and controls client's domains?
Owners, addresses, administrative, technical and billing contacts, registrars
How are client's domains used?
DNS, websites, web traffic data, SEO data
Who infringes client's rights?
Watching report
How to protect yourself?
Potential risks
Where to invest?
Gaps in the portfolio
Domain policy document
In the next step, we set up a domain strategy laid out on an adequate policy document, in order to help client manage their domain name portfolio and carry out their online brand protection, considering among others:
Which domains does client hold?
Domain name registration date and expiration date
Who owns and controls client's domains?
Owners, addresses, administrative, technical and billing contacts, registrars
From a domain inventory to a domain policy
A domain strategy decides which names a company holds, in which extensions, for what purpose, and who is responsible for them. Most portfolios grow without one: names registered by different teams at different registrars, defensive registrations nobody remembers, and markets where the company sells but holds no local domain. We audit the portfolio, then write the policy that keeps it in order.
The audit
- Inventory. All the domains of the group, at every registrar and in every subsidiary: holder, expiry date, contacts, name servers, use.
- Classification. Core names that carry the business, defensive names that protect it, and names that no longer serve anything.
- Gaps by market. The countries where the company sells, produces or recruits, compared with the country code domains it holds. A market without its local domain is a market where someone else can take it.
- Risks. Names about to expire, names held by former employees or agencies, names whose DNS point nowhere, look-alike names held by third parties.
- Alignment with the trademarks. Each registered trademark checked against the domains that should protect it, country by country.
The audit comes as a document with the full inventory, the classification and a list of actions with priorities: renew, consolidate, register, drop, recover.
The policy document
The policy turns the audit into rules the company can apply without us:
- Naming rules. Which names and which extensions for a product, a country, a campaign.
- Market coverage. The list of country code domains to hold per market, and the rule for a new market, including the restricted extensions where a local presence is needed.
- Ownership and access. One holder for the group, named contacts, who approves a registration or a deletion.
- Renewals and budget. Multi-year renewals for core names, yearly review of defensive names, a budget line per subsidiary.
- Security. Registry lock where the extension offers it, two-factor access, DNS hosting rules.
- Watching and enforcement. What is watched, who reads the alerts, when to act.
Who asks for it
Groups with subsidiaries that each bought their own domains; companies entering several countries at once; registrars and law firms who offer the audit to their clients under their own name; brand owners preparing a dispute and discovering that their portfolio has gaps. The deliverables are the same for all: the inventory as a spreadsheet, the audit report with its priorities, and the policy document ready to be signed off by the management.
What it usually produces
A portfolio of several hundred names typically mixes a small core, a larger layer of defensive names, and a long tail of forgotten ones. Consolidating everything with one registrar and dropping the tail generally frees enough budget to register the country code domains that were missing, and the policy stops the tail from growing back. The result is a portfolio that is smaller, complete for the markets that matter, and readable by anyone in the company.
After the audit
We implement the actions with you: transfers to a single account, registrations in the missing markets with the local presence where needed, recovery of the names held by third parties, and the watching service that feeds the yearly review. The policy is reviewed once a year, or when the company enters a new market.
Send us the list of your domains and your markets; the first step is an inventory, and we come back with the gaps.
