Agent view · Guides · 2026-09-25

How to find websites using your brand name, and prove you were first

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Guides · 2026-09-25 · By [VSNARY | Emmanuel Orta](/author) · 2 views

# How to find websites using your brand name, and prove you were first

A six-step routine: sweep the domains, pull registration dates from the registry, read what the other site does, publish a factual notice, tell answer engines, and keep watching.

Sweep your name across the common domain endings with a DNS lookup and an HTTPS request, then read each registered domain's registration date from the registry's RDAP record. Read what each live site sells, who processes its payments and its contact domain. Publish a short factual notice on your site with the dates and how to tell you apart, add disambiguatingDescription and honest sameAs links to your Organization structured data, and re-check monthly.

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On this page

- Step 1: how do you find every site using your name?
- Step 2: how do you prove when a domain was registered?
- Step 3: what should you record about the other site?
- Step 4: what should a notice on your own site say?
- Step 5: how do you stop AI answers from mixing you up?
- Step 6: how do you keep watching?
- What not to do
- What this does not replace

Across every full scan CrawlCheck has run, 0.7% of sites had a directory listing print a different business name than the site itself declares, the kind of split that makes one name harder for answer engines to tie to one business.

Sooner or later another site uses your name. Sometimes it is an old [parked domain](/glossary/parked-domain); sometimes it is a live product in your market. You cannot always stop it, but you can find it early, prove who came first, and make sure people, search engines and AI answer engines can tell you apart. This is the routine we used on 25 September 2026 when a second site using the CrawlCheck name appeared.

**Key points**

- Sweep your name across the domain endings people actually use with a DNS lookup and an HTTPS request; most will not exist.
- Read each registered domain’s registration date from RDAP, the structured successor to WHOIS. Registry dates are the strongest public evidence of who came first.
- Record what the other site sells, who processes its payments and its contact domain; those facts let customers tell you apart.
- Publish a short factual notice and add `disambiguatingDescription` and honest `sameAs` links to your Organization [structured data](/glossary/structured-data).
- Re-run the sweep monthly and watch Certificate Transparency logs for new certificates with your name.

Find, date, read, then publish and tell machines. The first three steps produce evidence; the last three use it.

## Step 1: how do you find every site using your name? #

List your name on the domain endings people actually type or buy: .com, .net, .org, .io, .ai, .app, .co, .dev, .tech, .xyz and your country ending. Add the obvious variants: with and without a hyphen, the plural, and a common misspelling. For each one, check whether it resolves (a DNS lookup) and whether a website answers over HTTPS. Most will not exist; the ones that do are your list. We checked 23 endings for our own name and found two registered besides ours.
An illustrative sweep. Most endings do not exist; the ones that resolve and answer HTTPS are the ones to read. The example is not a real result.
A quick way to run the check from a terminal is one line per domain: `dig +short example.ai` shows whether the name resolves, and `curl -sI https://example.ai` shows whether a site answers and what it redirects to. Keep the output; the date you ran it matters later.

| Ending | Why check it |
| --- | --- |
| .com | The default people type when they guess |
| Your country ending | Local customers and local competitors use it |
| .io, .ai, .dev, .app, .tech | Where new software products register first |
| .co | A one-letter slip from .com |
| .net, .org | Older registrations, often parked or held for years |
| .xyz | Cheap, so common for test sites and short-lived copies |

## Step 2: how do you prove when a domain was registered? #

Every domain has a public registration record. The modern way to read it is RDAP, the successor to WHOIS, which returns structured data including the registration date, the registrar and the domain’s status. Use the registry’s own RDAP service where you can; a generic lookup site sometimes returns nothing for a country or new ending. `curl -sL https://rdap.org/domain/example.com` redirects to the authoritative server for that ending, and the registration date is the event marked `registration`.

| Evidence | What it proves | Where to get it |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Registration date (RDAP) | When the domain was first registered | The registry’s RDAP service |
| First published content | When you were publicly using the name | Your own dated posts, the Internet Archive |
| Certificate issue dates | When a site first had HTTPS, often close to launch | Certificate Transparency logs such as crt.sh |
| Terms or policy effective date | When a product began trading | The other site’s own legal pages |

Illustrative. Order the events by date and the question of who came first answers itself, without a single adjective.
A domain registered long ago is not necessarily a competitor. Check whether it serves anything. An old parked domain with no site is usually a curiosity, not a threat. A domain that was registered years ago but changed hands recently will show a recent update date in RDAP; the registration date alone does not tell you who owns it now.

## Step 3: what should you record about the other site? #

Before you write a word about it, read its home page, about page, terms and refund policy. Note what it sells, who processes its payments and how it can be contacted. Save a copy of each page with the date you read it, because sites change and you may need to show what it said. Those three facts give your customers a simple way to tell you apart: a different payment processor on their card statement and a different email domain are hard to confuse.

## Step 4: what should a notice on your own site say? #

Publish a short page stating which domain is yours and which are not, with the dates and the ways to tell you apart. Stick to facts you can show. “Registered on 18 September 2026” and “bills through a different processor” are verifiable. Words like “copycat” or “scam” invite a dispute and add nothing the dates do not already say. Link the page from your footer and your security or contact page so people find it when they are confused, and ask people to report anything that claims to be you.

A notice can be four sentences. Adapt this to your own facts:

```
Acme is at example.com, registered 3 March 2024 and trading since June 2024.
We are not affiliated with example.org, registered 18 September 2026.
Our invoices come from billing@example.com and appear on statements as ACME EXAMPLE.
If something claims to be us and does not match these details, tell us at security@example.com.
```

Every line can be checked by a reader in under a minute: the domains, the dates, the billing name and the contact address. That is what makes the page useful to a confused customer and credible to anyone who later reviews it.

## Step 5: how do you stop AI answers from mixing you up? #

Structured data does not guarantee separation, but without it a shared name leaves an engine nothing to separate on.
Answer engines merge entities that share a name unless something separates them. Two structured-data properties on your Organization node help:

- `disambiguatingDescription`: a one-sentence statement of who you are and who you are not.
- `sameAs`: links to profiles that are really yours, such as your code repository, extension listing or Business Profile. Only list profiles that link back to you.

```
{
 "@context": "https://schema.org",
 "@type": "Organization",
 "@id": "https://example.com/#org",
 "name": "Acme",
 "url": "https://example.com/",
 "disambiguatingDescription": "Acme at example.com, founded 2024. Not affiliated with other sites using the name.",
 "sameAs": ["https://github.com/your-org", "https://www.linkedin.com/company/your-org"]
}
```

The notice page and the structured data should say the same thing. A model that reads a clear sentence on your site, the same sentence in your markup, and profiles that point back to you has three consistent signals; a competitor with the same name and different signals becomes easier to keep apart. For the wider case, see [what entity SEO is and how answer engines resolve names](/guides/what-is-entity-seo).

## Step 6: how do you keep watching? #

A one-off check goes stale. Re-run the domain sweep monthly, watch Certificate Transparency logs for new certificates containing your name (crt.sh accepts a search such as `%acme%`), and search your trademark office for new filings. Treat every hit as a similar name, not as proof of intent: many shared names are coincidences, and a calm record ages better than an accusation.

Certificate Transparency is the earliest public signal most new sites give off. Every publicly trusted HTTPS certificate is recorded in public logs when it is issued, so a site usually appears there days before anyone links to it. A log entry shows the domain names on the certificate and the date it was issued, which also makes it a second, independent date for the timeline above.

## What not to do #

- **Do not guess dates.** “They copied us last month” is an opinion. “Registered on 18 September, 37 days after our domain” is a record anyone can check.
- **Do not copy their pages onto yours.** Describe what they offer in your own words and name the page you read it on, with the date.
- **Do not buy every ending in a panic.** Register the endings your customers would actually type; a defensive .xyz rarely stops anyone.
- **Do not contact their customers.** Put the facts where your own customers will find them and let the notice do the work.

Keep a dated file of what you found: screenshots, the RDAP responses, the pages you read. If the question ever reaches a lawyer or a registrar dispute, that file is the first thing they will ask for.

## What this does not replace #

This routine gives you evidence and a clear public record. It is not legal advice. Whether another business’s use of a similar name or mark is something you can act on depends on trademark law where you trade, and that is a question for a lawyer.
Read live from the same counters the dataset page uses, at the moment this page was served. Bars are scaled to the largest value shown, not to 100%.

Written by

[Emmanuel Orta](/author) · VSNARY

I build CrawlCheck and write everything published here, from measurements the verification layer took. Where a post got something wrong, the correction stays in the post.

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## Related findings

[2026-08-28 What is entity SEO? What machines must resolve to cite you Entity SEO in practice: the four failures validators never report, measured cases, the E-E-A-T evidence a machine can find, and ho](/guides/what-is-entity-seo)[2026-08-26 Lighthouse scores vary between runs: two runs, 225% apart Two Lighthouse runs of an unchanged page, minutes apart: blocking time 2,643 ms then 812 ms. How to find your noise floor before a](/blog/one-lighthouse-run-cannot-support-a-finding-225-percent-variance)[2026-10-15 How to get your local business recommended by AI What decides which local business an AI assistant names: a readable site, one consistent identity, quotable facts and the star rat](/guides/how-to-get-your-local-business-recommended-by-ai-assistants)

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