Dreamhost in the Domain?

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for a piece of information that may be outdated because I can't find anything about it anymore.

Anyway, I thought I read something about Dreamhost not allowing promoters to use domains with "dreamhost" in the name? Like I said, I haven't seen anything about this recently not can I manage to dig it up in the Wiki or blog, so I am curious if I imagined this or if my hesitation is justified.

Advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

~
website building website building biz
my obligatory dreamhost coupons list

I've seen plenty of promocode sites advertised here and elsewhere with "dreamhost" in their URL's.

Would pay to ask Support if you're concerned.

I think this may have been the information you were looking for:

In reply to:

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"Rewards policy update, DreamHost trademark usage
Posted (December 29th, 2006 at 2:55 pm PST) by Jeff

Just a heads-up for those using our popular DreamHost Rewards program!

Lately we’ve been noticing an increase in the number of people utilizing DreamHost Rewards - this is good! We’re happy that you guys are spreading the word.

However, we’ve also noticed a marked increase in people using the ‘DreamHost’ trademark in their domain names in an apparent effort to add some degree of official-ness to their referral, improve search engine rankings, etc. Whether the intent is malicious or not, this sort of thing constitutes infringement of our ‘DreamHost’ trademark and we can’t allow that to continue.

Because of that, we’ve added the following verbiage to our DreamHost Rewards terms:

Gaining referrals through misrepresentation, improper use of DreamHost intellectual property (ie. DreamHost trademarks and copyrighted material) or impersonation of DreamHost personnel is strictly prohibited and can result in loss of accrued Rewards and/or removal from the program.

In 30 days, we will prevent Rewards from accruing for any domain that contains our registered trademark (including obvious misspellings, etc). Such Rewards links will simply cease to work. We will also begin contacting the owners of those domains in order to arrange a resolution.

If you have a domain that you believe may infringe upon DreamHost trademark, please contact us directly via Tech Support as soon as possible. For those domains registered prior to today we will happily provide a 1 year domain registration once the domain is under our control so that their owners can register a different domain in its place.

If you have any questions, please let us know!

Update: Just for clarification, these changes won’t impact those using dreamhosters.com sub-domains or old-school dreamhost.com sub-domains!

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From dreamhoststatus.com

(note: there are some clarifying remarks (along with the typical inanity) in the comments)

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

Thanks, that's the exact post that was hanging out in my subconscious - holding my finger back from the register button on what looked like a great domain.

The sites with Dreamhost in the domain or subdomain still seem to dominate the SERPs. I might end up taking this up with support after all to clarify about subdomains. I'll let ya'll know if I do find out any more specifics.

If it wasn't for Google's insane ranking policy I would be able to get my website building blog somewhere decent in the results - but 100+ pages of unique content and near daily updates don't seem to matter as much as stuffing keywords in your URL.

Oh yeah, and people still seem to be scared of the .biz domain. I thought it would be a cool TLD to build a business-oriented site on :/

~
website building website building biz
my obligatory dreamhost coupon list

If you do take this up with them. Would you mind asking support if this only applies to the URL's or do they have plans on doing away with the dreamhost ads that were created for linking the url's.
In my mind it is the same thing even though it may not appear in google that way. But to the viewer who clicks on that ad. That person may get the impression of what Dreamhost is trying to prevent.
Silk

My website

There's been domains registered with DreamHost in their names with the sole intent of offloading promocodes since that policy update came out too. Are they are actually proactive in enforcing that particular policy?

Actually, yes they are ... the beauty of it is that the promocodes from those domains just don't work ... when they are entered into the sign-up process, they just report a "disabled" reward program.

Of course, one could slip through for a short time, but they are usually quickly identified and disabled - makes it totally unprofitable for those who are trying that tactic.

--rlparker
--DreamHost Tech Support

DreamHost: Always on the ball

It seems independant (OP) could avail himself to a free dreamhosters.com subdomain to get 'dreamhost' (or at least part of it) into the URL for SEO purposes and remain within policy guidelines. Would this return a realworld benefit from an SEO standpoint, or would the 'ers' in 'dreamhosters' negate that assumption?