With the news that UK-based discount retailer Poundland has been sold to US investment company Gordon Brothers for a 'nominal sum' of less than its eponymous £1, amid 'challenging trading conditions'[1,2,3], we take a look at the domain-name landscape for the brand, following similar analyses for other previous troubled companies[4,5,6,7,8].
Consideration of the set of registered brand-specific domains is of key importance for any incumbent or incoming brand owner, for a number of reasons. Primary considerations might typically include assessing whether there is enough strength in the set of defensive registrations, determining if the portfolio could be downsized by lapsing low-priority and/or high-cost and obscure domain names in order to save on renewal costs, and assessing whether web traffic is optimised by ensuring that all inactive domains re-direct to the official transactional website[9].
Brand owners should generally also analyse the landscape of third-party domains for any indications of fraud, brand infringement or traffic misdirection. This type of consideration can be particularly pertinent at time of high-profile news stories - such as this particular development with Poundland - when bad actors are often all too keen to take advantage of heightened public interest to launch their own scams associated with the brand.
In the case of Poundland, analysis of domain zone-file data[10] showed that, as of 13-Jun-2025 (i.e. one day after the break of the news story), there were 120 registered domains with names containing the brand. Whilst this is a relatively modestly-sized landscape, it certainly still warrants a deeper dive to determine any associated trends and patterns.
Whilst the company's official primary domain (poundland.co.uk) has limited available registrant information (as is usual for .co.uk domains due to data redaction following the introduction of GDPR), it is possible to identify other associated characteristics, such as registrar and MX record hosting provider, to confirm its official status. These details can then be cross-referenced to identify other official domains in the portfolio. Additionally, the associated (also official) .com domain (poundland.com), which can be seen to re-direct to the .co.uk version of the site, does have a somewhat richer associated dataset.
On this basis, at least 46 of the 120 brand-specific domains can be seen definitively to be under Poundland's official ownership. Only 11 of these display official content, with the remainder found to be non-resolving, displaying error pages or blank pages, leaving some room for further portfolio configuration optimisation.
This leaves 74 potential third-party domains to be assessed for potential threats. Of these, 32 produce some sort of live website response, and 40 are configured with active MX (mail exchange) records, indicating the ability to send and receive e-mails - providing a potential risk of phishing activity and/or other types of brand impersonation from these domains.
Amongst the domains resolving to live content, a range of examples hosting various types of content of potential concern were identified. Some examples, all of which are worthy of consideration for enforcement action, are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Examples of websites featuring content of potential concern, associated with Poundland-specific domain names:
- (a) e-commerce and utilisation of official branding (lovepoundland[.]store and moban-poundland[.]site)
- (b) e-commerce and use of same brand name (poundlandshop[.]store)
- (c) e-commerce - re-direction to external third-party sites (i. poundlandfabric[.]com - re-directs to poundametre[.]com; ii. onlinepoundland[.]co[.]uk and onlinepoundland[.]com - both re-direct to mxwholesale[.]co[.]uk)
- (d) misdirection to third-party content (poundlandol[.]shop)
- log-in page with official branding (poundlandreporting[.]co[].uk) (possibly official)
Other examples include pages displaying pay-per-click (PPC) links, or domains being offered for sale, highlighting the intention of taking advantage of the renown of the brand to monetise the web traffic being driven to the sites in question.
Some additional data 'clusters' are also apparent, such as a batch of three .shop (dot-shop) names referencing 'poundlandheart', all registered with privacy-protected whois records, through the same registrar on the same day.
One further domain (poundlandharlow[.]com) was found to be registered simply to 'Poundland' (rather than the more usual 'Poundand Limited' used for other official domains - and with a non-official registrar), and may represent a 'semi-official domain', perhaps registered by an individual store franchisee, highlighting also some requirement for portfolio consolidation - an additional point which the new brand owners would also be well advised to address.
Given the range of relevant findings from just a small pool of domains for Poundland, we strongly also recommend other brand owners to remain vigilant in their brand protection endeavours. In the eyes of infringers, any brand-related news is good news, as it generally results in increased levels of public interest and volumes of search traffic. At such times, bad actors will find opportunities to take full advantage, and brand owners will generally find that, in those moments, good preparation and a robust brand protection strategy will pay off.
References
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/31c6338d-74c8-4c71-ad20-337beade4c71
[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c36594lr29ko
[4] https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/wilko-a-target-for-scams-following-administration
[5] https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/high-steaks-game-hawksmoors-ipo-and-its-domains
[7] https://www.iamstobbs.com/opinion/no-party-ip-associated-with-the-fallen-tupperware-brand
[10] The analysis includes direct interrogation of raw domain-name zone files where available, generally thereby giving comprehensive coverage across all gTLDs, and is augmented by the use of additional datasets for ccTLD results, to gain maximum possible (though not completely comprehensive) coverage in these cases.
This article was first published on 10 July 2024 at:
https://www.iamstobbs.com/insights/literally-everythings-ps1-the-poundland-domain-landscape
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