From time to time I run into domain names that I am surprised are not owned by the “big brand” but it does happen. Here are a few that I ran into recently or simply were aware of that inspired this article and I’m sure there are plenty more, so feel free to share them in the comment section below. The fact is, just because we may be aware of a big brand name, doesn’t always mean the own the exact match domain name.
Napa Auto Parts aka National Automotive Parts Association aka Genuine Parts Company was founded in 1925 and has about 6,000 Napa auto parts stores in the United States. They sponsor the heck out of race cars in NASCAR and other divisions and have a large advertising budget. They do not own the four letter .com domain name Napa.com. The companies main domain name for its website is NapaOnline.com which was registered May 11, 1996. According to Alexa.com, the highest searched term delivering search engine traffic to its website is “napa” with nearly 32%. The company owns about 170 domain names total.
To make matters domain worse, the company uses the domain name Genpt.com as its main company website domain. “Licenses plate” domains have never been a good idea and still are not today! The company does own GenuinePartsCompany.com but the domain does not resolve. They also own NapaAutoParts.com, which also does not resolve. Some companies “get it”, many clearly do not and Napa Auto Parts is one of them that needs some domain help!
Napa.com is owned by Napa Group Inc. and is a software provider. The domain name was registered on January 20, 1995.
AutoParts.com is owned by Anything.com and was registered July 26, 1997.
Apple Inc. launched the iPad on April 3, 2010 and currently does not own the EMD. They have sold some 250 Million + units and have not acquired the iPad.com domain name from “Enero 6 Corp.” who has owned the domain name for a long time.
iPad.com was registered on April 21, 1997. Apple uses Apple.com/ipad for the home of the iPad as it does with the majority of its products. They do own iPhone.com, iCloud.com and many more domain names but not iPad.com.
Minecraft which was acquired by Microsoft for $2.5 Billion does not own Minecraft.com and the company uses Minecraft.net for its main domain name for the ever popular game. There was an alpha release of Minecraft on May 17, 2009 and the full release took place November 18, 2011. Microsoft acquired Mojang/Minecraft November 6, 2014.
Minecraft.com was created on July 10, 2003 and is owned by Scalar Solutions in Australia, which offers mining consulting.
Tesla as the cars are mainly referred as and the above logo displays but the official companies name is Tesla Motors. The domain name Tesla.com is not owned by the car maker or the 80’s band and is actually owned by SG Consulting with the domain name being registered November 4, 1992. The domain name resolves to a standard registrar landing page and in this case is a Gandi SAS registered domain name.
Tesla Motors uses the matching domain name to its full company name, TeslaMotors.com for its main website and is a bit surprising they do not own Tesla.com, but they do not.
Tinder Inc., which is owned by Match.com is a very popular dating app, uses the domain name GoTinder.com for its main website. The domain name was registered June 22, 2012. Tinder.com was registered October 15, 1998 and IS actually owned by Tinder but they only redirect the domain name to GoTinder.com. So it only appears that they may not own the EMD, simply because they use GoTinder.com for its main website. Match.com acquired the EMD Tinder.com on March 9, 2013 according to whois records.
The majority of the time, when a company acquires the EMD and had launched on a different domain, they switch to the better EMD but not in this case… at least not yet.
So that was just a quick snapshot of some big brands that do not own exact match domains and one that actually does but doesn’t “really” use it. It is always advised and simply makes sense to not confuse people to use the exact match domain name (almost always .com) to the brand product or service you offer.
This is a very informative post on the domains of some big brands. It’s very important to own the END but bit a must. What the company has to offer far supercedes the address. Thank you for sharing and I really it.
Other big ones:
Nissan – very public battle, EMD owned by an Israeli named Uzi Nissan
AmericanExpress – still doesn’t own the EMD, just amex.com
Showtime – Run on Sho.com, shorter, but not EMD
Square – doesn’t own the EMD, but seemingly have some kind of lease deal setup
LaBoulange – Starbucks bought for $100M, but still uses laboulangebakery.com, not the EMD
Trident gum
And a ton of sports companies…
They do own AmericanExpress, and Tridentgum is the url for the gum company. The trident dot com, it is an Amazon a-store.
You’re right, i was thinking amex.com which they don’t own, just their nickname, not EMD
B&Q retail company does not even use their brand name they are super smart and use diy.com
So it can work the other way around! I’m sure more companies will do this in the future.
Like Soup.com?
The french carmaker PSA (Peugeot-Citroën) doesn’t own PSA.com and is using MPSA.com for the employees email addresses.