The first thing most candidates do to create a presence on the internet is register a domain name and establish a web site for their campaign. So what domain name do they choose? The domain name of choice seems to logically be firstnamelastname.com. Other logical choices are lastname.com, firstnamelastnameYYYY.com, lastnameYYYY.

The simple process of registering your name can be troublesome as some of our 2008 presidential candidates have found out. Candidates that are well known many times have their names registered by cybersquaters hoping to receive a big payoff selling the domains. Some can win a legal battle and acquire the domain name in question as Hillary Clinton did with hillaryclinton.com. Michele Dinoia a/k/a SZK.com had registered hillaryclinton.com back in 2001 but a ruling by the National Arbitration Forum ordered that the domain be transferred to the complainant Hillary Rodham Clinton. This order posted on the National Arbitration Forum web site says it was based upon the following findings:

• The domain name registered by Respondent is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which Complainant has rights
• Respondent has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name
• The domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

An interesting note also found in the decision at National Arbitration Forum states the following:

Complainant avers that it has common law rights in the HILLARY CLINTON mark. Under Policy ¶ 4(a)(i), a complainant need not hold a registered trademark to establish rights in a mark. Common law rights are sufficient when a complainant demonstrates secondary meaning associated with a mark.

If the 3 requirements above are not found to be true the candidate may have to just be a bit more creative in the domain naming or pay the high price to the current registered domain owner. A quick look at the domain whois info for rudygiuliani.com (provided by Domain Tools) will show you that the domain is registered by Zev Adler. I wonder if Zev has a legitimate interest in the domain, and if Rudy Giuliani has tried to get the domain by legal or financial means. I will have to ask Rudy’s campaign about that one I guess.

Age of a domain

The age of the domains going into the campaign season is an important one. Domains that were registered years ago have had a chance to gain trust in the eyes of the search engines and get a lead in the search engine result pages (SERPs). This head start on trust can be achieved by having an active domain in previous years with relevant content and backlinks from other trustworthy web sites.

Dennis Kucinich registered kucinich.us back in May of 2002 and has received over 46,000 backlinks to a wealth of content that has been built since then. In contrast Tom Tancredo just registered teamtancredo.org on 01-13-2007. It will be tough for a web site such as teamtancredo.org to catch up with kucinich.com. In the near future we will see if we can locate the two in the SERPs and test our theory.

Candidate Websites & Domains

Here is the list of our candidates and their web sites. You will also find the create date of their domains and links to their respective whois info over at DomainTools.com.