This can particularly be important in the case of monitoring for domains containing brand names which may be short or common words in their own right, and/or which frequently appear as sub-strings of other unrelated terms.

Our new study illustrates how a relatively simple ‘domain risk scoring’ approach, analysing just the domain name itself and incorporating ‘weightings’ dependent on the context within the domain name where the brand reference appears, and the presence of relevant and non-relevance keywords, can be used to effectively rank domains identified through broad searches. In extensions to this idea, it would be possible to extend the scoring formulation to take account of other inherent characteristics of the domain, such as TLD, MX record, or registrant, registrar or hosting-provider characteristics. 

Furthermore, by combining this domain risk scoring approach with a ‘content risk score’ formulation, comprising an analysis of the content of any associated webpage, it is possible to carry out a deeper dive into the set of ranked results, to identify live content of potential interest, to serve as priority targets for further analysis, content tracking, or enforcement.

You can read the full study here.