Franchisors, Don’t Pull a Jeb Bush and Let Trump Get Your Website

Let this be a lesson, franchisors—don’t forget to register or renew your website’s domain.

It appears that Jeb Bush’s campaign never bothered to register JebBush.com. Fortunately, for the first several months of the campaign, that never seemed to matter—the domain was left benevolently blank, and Jeb2016.com was being used instead.

But sometime last fall, someone appears to have noticed the perfect opportunity to pull a prank. So they swooped in, made a bid and scooped up the domain. Now, if you try typing “JebBush.com” into your URL field, you’ll see a pretty jarring result—it takes you straight to the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump’s website. To dispel speculation, Trump campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said that their team is not involved in the redirect, and the actual owner of the domain is unknown, utilizing a privacy domain service to stay unlisted.

How, after immigration reform activists snapped up TedCruz.com and CarlyFiorina.org became a testament to the layoffs Fiorina ordered at Hewlett-Packard, could Bush’s people not lock up JebBush.com? The world may never know. But if there’s any takeaway from this digital misdirection, it’s this—whether you’re a business owner or a politician, make sure you own the rights to domains that carry your name. Otherwise, you might get Trumped.

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