Branded Web site embargo to be lifted

The ban on brand name sites on the Internet is to be lifted in response to commercial pressure.

The Government-funded body responsible for Net registration, the United Kingdom Education Re-search Network Association (Ukerna), only allows company trading names to appear on the World Wide Web (WWW). Ukerna has decided to do away with the rule in June.

Matthew Timms, new media manager at Vauxhall, whose Web site has had 2.5 million claimed “visits” since it began ten months ago, says: “This will suit high-profile brands owned by low-profile companies.”

There are 15,000 British-based businesses on the Web, but 7,000 of them have only been on stream since January. By the end of the year, with the addition of brand-only sites, industry sources say this figure could increase tenfold.

More British companies publish on the Internet than read it, claims a new report.

A quarter of the blue-chip companies questioned said although they had a site on the Internet they never bothered to check what else was on it.

Graham Brown, of Tunbridge Wells-based IT consultants Neaman Bond, who carried out the report, says: “At the moment, British businesses view the Net as immature, but that is changing all the time.”

The report, Corporate Intentions on the Internet, was funded by Slough corporate software company Computer Associates. It questioned 80 British companies included in the Global 5000 index.