Lalaloopsy Dolls offered by MGA Entertainment are some of the hottest Christmas toys in 2010. Retailers are selling out of these Dolls left and right, and people are turning to the Internet to buy these dolls for Christmas gifts.
Although the company that sells the dolls registered the difficult to spell domain name, Lalaloopsy.com, back in August of 2010, it didn’t register other domain names that are important to its brand. Both LalaloopsyDoll.com and LalaloopsyDolls.com are registered to people who don’t appear to be affiliated with the company.
Both these descriptive domain names have advertising on them with links to Christmas gifts. Additionally, typos of the brand domain name have also been registered and have PPC links on them.
Had the company spent less than $100 more, it could have bought a number of strategic domain names to protect the brand (and control visitors) online. Instead, private individuals appear to control these key Internet assets.
With childrens’ brands, it is even more critical that companies understand domain names and domain name strategy. Nefarious companies and individuals can easily take typos and other domain names and send visitors to any website they choose. They can also generate PPC revenue by putting ads on the domain names.
Perhaps a corporate domain registrar like Mark Monitor (where Lalaloopsy.com is registered) could add a tool that shows potential domain name typos at the time of purchase and warn registrants that others could buy similar sounding domain names. It would help generate revenue for them and would provide a service to registrants.
Perhaps they sell these overseas and choose to reg idns? although a good mover to have the popular versions it is hard to cover all bases i suggest