What Are Domain Hoarders?

By Addy K.

The internet is one vast landscape with narrow slices cut out that are websites, much like the land carved out in real estate. When you think of the internet in these terms, you can also picture those who buy out swaths of land and do nothing with them except hold onto them against the day when they might be able to resell the land for a greater profit. This is what domain hoarders are.

Domain hoarders buy out as many domain names as they can and do nothing with them in the hopes of selling them when the market becomes starved and are willing to pay outrageous prices to own the names. You may think that they are lone people with cash to burn, a nasty streak towards humanity and an even wider streak of greed, but in fact, many of these hoarders are actually companies with the capital to buy out thousands of domain names to hold onto them for some undisclosed time; basically until they can slowly leak them out for high prices. The problem continues because it’s certainly not illegal to buy as many domain names as one can afford; but it’s highly irritating.

The main problem with hoarding domain names is that it then slows up the development of internet business as a whole. Legitimate online businesses cannot use a name that makes the most sense for their content because it’s already been purchased meaning that they have to use less obvious domain names and thus they have a harder time getting ‘walk-in’ traffic; that is, traffic that has just stumbled upon their site while looking for what is being sold. Less clear domain names are also harder to market and harder for customers to remember later. Hoarding domain names also makes it a lot harder for new businesses to develop and thus stymies the development of the internet into something truly global overall.

There is no legal action that can be taken against domain hoarders; it’s not illegal to buy domains and in whatever numbers one chooses to purchase them in. The only real thing that can be done is to be creative about choosing your domain so that you’ll still be memorable and make sure not to give in to these company’s outrageous demands for high cost domains when you can get a cheaper one with a bit creativity and time used to research a good name.

Don’t give into domain hoarders! The best action against them is a lack of action by not purchasing a domain name from any company that is not specifically a web hosting company that gives you other perks like website building.