Basic Rules
Domain names should be easy to remember and communicate, intuitively related to the content, and unambiguous. Where multiple words are used it is recommended to use hyphens to be more legible.
Domains which use "bayer" or "bay" with other words to coin new names are not allowed because they dilute the Bayer brand. E.g. baydoc.com, bayer-checkup.com would not be suitable domains. The only exceptions to this are campaign slogans which include "Bayer" that have been approved by Corporate Branding.
Existing domains that are not yet owned by Bayer must be transferred to Bayer.
Domains should be of the form bayer.[tld], (bayer.co.[tld] or bayer.com.[tld] in some countries such as Britain, Brazil or Japan)
The Bayer brand strategy avoids the public presentation of organizational structure.
Sample international website domains:
Sample national website domains:
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agri.bayer.fr
Bayer brands are registered as trademarks and, thus, protected against infringement under the provisions of trademark law. Domain name registration plays an important role in increasing brand recognition and awareness. This can also prevent damage to Bayer's trademarks incurred through domain squatting by third parties.
Strong brands such as Aspirin™, Adalat™, Confidor™ may have their own relevant global and regional domains:
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[domain].[tld]
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adalat.com, adalat.br
Additionally or alternatively product sites can be registered as subdomains of the relevant Bayer domain in the form of [subdomain].bayer.[tld]:
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aspirin.bayer.[tld]
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bepanthen.bayer.[tld]
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adalat.bayer.[tld]
In accordance with the design rules, topic or campaign sites should follow either the corporate naming strategy for corporate topics, or the product naming strategy for product campaigns.
Corporate topics
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[subdomain].bayer.[tld]
Product campaigns
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[product or campaign].[tld]
Additionally or alternatively campaign sites can be registered as subdomains of the relevant Bayer domain in the form of [subdomain].bayer.[tld].
Sometimes intranet websites must be hosted externally, or even accessible for external users. These websites require special domain names.
Internal websites, externally hosted
Some Bayer websites must be hosted on Bayer’s private cloud, even though they are for internal use only. Domains for these websites are always of the form [name].int.bayer.com.
Examples
youniverse.int.bayer.com
Intranet websites, externally accessible
Occasionally, an intranet website needs to be available to external users. Such cases are referred to as “joint domains” because they have the same name for internet and intranet users. In practice, these might be physically separate servers. All such sites must be registered as subdomains of bayer.biz.
Examples
mycloud.bayer.biz
mytransfer-lev.bayer.biz
Applications that are designed to run in the browser should have a descriptive name. The actual domain name depends upon the hosting environment; please refer to the appropriate category above.
It is occasionally necessary to use domains for technical purposes such as mail servers, test servers, database services, logging, etc. As these names are never to be used in a browser, non-descriptive names should be used.
Examples
nvppa10.bayer.ch
p-xyz.bayer.com
When working on a new project or product it is sometimes advisable to register related or similar domains beyond the one(s) following the basic rules listed above. This is known as “defensive registration” and is intended to prevent third parties from registering such domains themselves for disruptive or abusive purposes.
However, if you decide that some defensive registration is required, you should also follow the principle that “less is more”. Consider carefully the countries and audiences you will be targeting and do not try and register every possible combination. In particular do not register sub-domains of an existing Bayer domain, as no third party is able to do this.
What does [tld] mean?
TLD means top-level domain, e.g. .com or .de
Website configuration
Websites can be configured to work with multiple domains with and without "www". Ideally, one domain "www" should be configured as the canonical domain name: the one to which all aliases redirect to. So that, whichever alias domain people use, the browser will always show the canonical domain. This also avoids potential issues with search engines and cookies.
It is not permitted to use frames, meta-redirects or other client-side redirects when configuring multiple domains for a single website.
Domains must not be registered for social media channels. Please refer to the Social Media Naming Strategy for information on naming social media channels.