The Power of Internet Gripe Sites

Defensive Strategies to Prevent Gripe Sites

Since gripe sites are often difficult to reclaim, one common defensive strategy is the registration of brandsucks domains by brand owners. These domains are composed of a known brand, followed by the word “sucks.” The addition of “sucks” to the brand is one of the simpler and more intuitive pejorative terms and brand owners often seek advice on how to handle these domains. “Sucks.com” is the rightmost anchor of nearly 20,000 domains registered today. Two thousand domains have “stinks.com” on the right and about the same number of domains begin with the term “boycott.” “Sucks” is evidently the preferred violation of brands that domain registrants want to protest or tarnish. Because of this, we chose to focus on “sucks” sites and gathered data from these domains based on a variety of perspectives. The purpose of this paper is to take a look at the ways in which brands deal with this dilemma in hopes of establishing a set of best practices; which will act as one component of an overall domain name strategy. We also intend to trace the origins of harvesting potential gripe sites and question whether this strategy truly serves the brand owner’s best interests.

< previous page | next page >