VeriSign Launches Domain, Brand-Monitoring Services

Domain registrar and Web-security firm VeriSign Inc. on Thursday revealed a new set of services it says will help companies track and protect their brands online.

The services include domain management, which makes a portfolio of a company's sites available through a Web interface; digital brand services, wherein VeriSign will monitor the Web for sites that infringe on brands, logos, or marks; and global registration, designed to help companies register in different countries and top-level domains.

To handle the workload from the new services, VeriSign is taking over two smaller registrars--1GlobalPlace Inc. in California and NameEngine Inc. in New York--in deals valued at a combined $11 million.

Jupiter analyst Matthew Berk says domain and brand management can be "a very large burden" for businesses, and these sorts of services are going to become a lot more common. "If you went to relatively large corporations six months ago, they may have had four people in charge registering and managing their domains," he says. "Now they're going to want to find someone else to do it."