Domain Policy
The house rules the domain cleanup suggestions follow — which kinds of domain your brands keep on principle.
Domain Cleanup gives every domain in a brand a keep-or-release suggestion, decided by a short decision tree rather than by AI. The facts about a domain — what it is to its brand (its type, captured when the brand is inferred), when it was registered, whether it serves a live site — only go so far: whether a domain that could be released should be is a matter of policy. The domain policy tells the decision tree what your organisation keeps on principle, so the suggestions follow your rules rather than guessing them.
The switches
| Switch | Off (the default) | On |
|---|---|---|
| Keep domains for product lines and campaigns | Domains registered for a product line, campaign, event or promotion are suggested for release, current product lines included, unless the domain still serves a live site | They are kept, even once the campaign has ended |
| Keep domains in markets you don't operate in | Country-code domains (brand.fr, brand.co.uk) for markets outside the ones you operate in are suggested for release | They are kept as defensive registrations |
| Keep sensitive top-level domains (.xxx, .sexy and the like) | Defensive registrations on sensitive or novelty top-level domains are suggested for release | They are kept so nobody else can register them |
| Keep your brand names on non-geographic domains (.info, .biz, .net and the like) | A brand name on a generic extension with no country in it (brand.info, brand.biz, a brand.com that is not the primary domain), held only so nobody else can have it, is suggested for release unless it is a primary domain or has a live site | It is kept so nobody else can register it |
| Keep brand-name variants (brand-usa.com, brand-mirror.com and the like) | Hyphenated or suffixed variants of a brand name and common misspellings are suggested for release unless the domain has a live site — holding a name purely as protection is not a reason to keep it | They are kept so nobody else can register them |
Every switch is off by default: the suggestions lean towards tidying up, and a brand manager still confirms each domain before anything is released.
The suggestions rest on the facts the platform has — when a domain was registered, and whether it has a live site (it answered on the web when scanned). There is no traffic or visitor data, and the suggestions never claim any.
Markets you operate in is optional prose — "UK, Ireland and Germany" — that tells the suggestions which country-code domains are for markets you actually serve. Left blank, market domains are kept, with a note asking you to name your markets: the decision tree cannot tell a served market from an unserved one on its own.
Geographic domains — country codes such as brand.fr or brand.co.uk — are
a matter of markets: the second switch and Markets you operate in decide
them, not the other switches.
What happens when you save
Suggestions are not stored: each one is computed from the domain's type, its facts and the policy every time it is shown. Saving a changed policy therefore changes every suggestion at once — on the Zones table, on every request page and in the emails not yet sent — with nothing to re-run and nothing to wait for. Saving the same policy again changes nothing.
The page shows who last saved the policy and when. Admins and Members can change it; Read-only users can see it.
Related
- Domain Cleanup — the tool the policy steers
- Brands — the brands whose domains are judged