For the second time this week, we met a wonderful small business and exposed to them to a fact that shocked them.

They did not own their URL.

They thought they did. They were paying for it monthly and simply concluded it was their possession. A look at their domain ownership revealed that the domain re-seller they used had registered the company’s URL in the name of the re-seller, and not their company.

I would have to say that over the past four months, perhaps 1 in 7 companies that met with us at SGG regarding their web development did not own their domains and were quite surprised to find that out.

The issue in all cases seems to be confusion over two entities that are involved in your Internet business life: your domain registrar and your website hosting company.

Many of our new clients have used their website hosting company to secure their domain registration without realizing that the website hosting company had to go through a third-party domain registrar such as godaddy.com or networksolutions.com to secure the URL.

With the exception of trademarked terms, there is no limitation on who can register a domain. I don’t have to be the “Bob” in Bob’s Pool Store to register bobspoolstore.com.

Once the domain (or URL or website address) is registered, it stays with the owner as long as they satisfactorily pay the annual renewal fee to the domain registrar. In setting up the domain registration, the registrant indicates what credit card is charged, what email address notifications go to, and whether or not the renewals occur automatically if an active credit card is on file.

That’s how someone else could own your domain and you not know it. If the notifications are going to an email address that isn’t yours, and if your credit card is not the one being charged, you may never know the status of your domain ownership unless you click here and type in your website address to find out.

But don’t stop reading at the first line! Most domain registrars ask for four different contacts on the account: the registrant, the administrative contact, the technical contact, and the billing contact. Even if you, or your business, is listed as the registrant, but your re-seller has listed themselves as the administrative contact, billing contact, and technical contact, the real control of the domain lies with them. If they change the password, most registrars will email any change notification to the admin contact and/or the technical contact – not the registrant.

If you’re a business owner, you simply must own your domain. It is an asset of the business and not owning a domain that has been used in the advertising and promotion of your business could hamper your efforts to sell or transfer your business.

That means you should be listed as the registrant and the admin contact. If your reseller wants to be the technical contact, fine.

So make sure you are a website owner, not a website renter. Click here and make sure you are the rightful owner.