EMD, question about domain similarity.

Hi,

I am pretty new to the whole IM business, as I started out, I found a niche that I can write about, started a website, found a Domain name that is related to my idea, without considering a fact that there's a huge company around "Big name" that has a somewhat similar domain name to which I have choosen, but theirs is more powerful because it's shorter.

My questions and big concerns are.

1) Am I preaching any kind of rules, without me knowing did I make an illegal action that can make me troubles in the future? Should I correct it and move my whole website to a brand new name?
2) Will that hurt my ranking in the eyes of google? Will it make my website less valuable?

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong section, I'm pretty new here and I just found out that there's a sub-forum called "Domain names" move this if you like, but I don't want to create a double post in Blackhatworld

No probs man...

1- If it would be a agressive company like evisu,pfilzer,paypal etc etc you could get some troubles with lawyers etc. Personally i wouldnt do that due to experience

2- My experiences say NOPE.

Good luck...

Check to see if the name is trademarked. It might be a good idea to use a different domain to avoid legal trouble while it's still early and you haven't established rankings yet.

Yes, I haven't established ranking at all yet, the company is pretty huge worldwide and it actually is located in so many countries and believe me I didn't think of it as a problem until now, I wish I could share the name to get more ideas, my next question would be, how hard is it to move my whole site into a new domain? or is it as easy as 1,2,3 and can be done in minutes? because right now I'm in the process of moving my site to a new hosting company and they offer free domain registration, so I can do it now if i can.

To give you an idea my domain start with a word then next to it the companyname with a com at the end.

p.s. how to check the name if its trademarket twilightofidols?

Exact answer cannot be given without knowing the domain. However in my personal experience having a domain name similar to one of the big guys doesn't effect much. Infact it can be sometimes beneficial. Consider for example that a certain brand name has developed huge internet customer base. Having a similar domain to that brand name (and after doing some proper seo) you could get your website ranked on that brand name keyword and infact attract many of their customers to your website. This can be highly beneficial since you can easily cash on these people.
This is however one scenario. As I said I cannot say anything specific without knowing the domain. It doesn't hurt much however. Thanks

the exact domain of mine is childmothercare and the company name is well known as a big store called mother care and they own mothercare com

I have no experience with this but in that exact case I would think it's really hard for them to object to your name. Their own brand name is a combination of words that is often used and you even added one that is related in normal speech as well.

If you don't go on and bank off them in a very agressive manner I think they would have a very hard time at least in my countries court(Netherlands).

I'm not a lawyer or have anything to do with the law.

Piratematerial said:

I have no experience with this but in that exact case I would think it's really hard for them to object to your name. Their own brand name is a combination of words that is often used and you even added one that is related in normal speech as well.

If you don't go on and bank off them in a very agressive manner I think they would have a very hard time at least in my countries court(Netherlands).

I'm not a lawyer or have anything to do with the law.

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Thank you very much, thats a relief. because changing the domain now would mean that all the backlinking that I already have done have went to waste, which isn't the case anymore.