IG Group goes into the domain hosting business two years after purchasing unique TLDs – Exclusive report

In 2014, British spreadbetting and CFD giant IG Group bought a series of unique top-level domain (TLD) codes with industry specific words after the dot, so instead of dot com, they would read dot forex, or dot trading, and dot spreadbetting.

Whilst this was a very interesting development indeed, and followed in the footsteps of Japanese electronic trading company GMO Click Securities having bought z.com from Nissan Motor Company for $6.8 million, making it the owner of one of only three single-letter domains on the entire worldwide web, what i after the dot is critical, and IG Group’s shrewd purchase was a very significant move which allows it to diversify its services into becoming an actual hosting firm from which other electronic trading firms could lease domains.

A constant concern among many retail brokerages these days is value proposition. Value proposition does not just apply to marketing and product range, or trading platform. These days, the online world is so crowded, and Google has stuck firmly to its principle of sending crawlers to similarly designed and worded websites to check for duplicate content or too many ‘also-ran’ sites offering similar wording and sentences.

This is down to Google’s ‘user-focused’ ideology of not wanting to have the first pages of any search clogged up with the same content, therefore any firms doing this on a regular basis or emulating each other (a common practice for white label providers which simply put different logos on the same website) will be penalized without warning and their site will disappear from the first search page. Google recognizes certain long-established sites and allows approximately 3 sites with similar content on one specific subject but will punish newcomers with copy content.

Now, some time on, IG Group has begun to set some of these unique TLDs in motion in a live environment, one such example being reviews.spreadbetting, which has now begun the establishment of a distribution channel that it is reaching via Solus emails.

In London, subscribers of British business-orientated tabloid newspaper CityAM have begun receiving Solus emails directly from the email address [email protected] with the title “Compare and find your perfect spread betting broker”, with the email mailer stating “Are you choosing a spread betting broker, or do you want to know where your broker ranks among the competition? Our easy-to-understand broker reviews will help you decide which is best for you. We provide easy access to the information you need to know about spread betting.”

Pricing, range of markets, trading platforms, customer Support and FCA records are categories that are listed within the reviews.spreadbetting service, are categories that the service considers to be criteria on which spread betting brokerages can be rated.

Indeed, whilst this service is offered in conjunction with CityAM and the footer of the Solus email states that it is being distributed by, and is the copyright of City AM, the .spreadbetting domain was one of those purchased by IG Group during its unique TLD acquisition, and IG Group appears as a major brand in the top left hand side of the reviews.spreadbetting website.

This is a very interesting development and certainly demonstrates the initiative by those wishing to diversify and provide modern services to an ever-discerning audience.