Managing verified domains#

Verified domains are domains that have been confirmed to belong to a specific brand. When a user looks up a verified domain, the tool displays the brand's badge prominently at the top of the results.

What is a verified domain?#

A verified domain is an apex domain (like google.com) that an admin has added to the database with a brand association. Verification tells the tool: "This domain belongs to this organization."

Verified domains serve two purposes:

Display — Show the brand badge on domain lookups.
NS record inheritance — When a nameserver hostname is under a verified domain, it automatically inherits the brand. For example, if cloudflare.com is verified as "Cloudflare," then ns1.cloudflare.com is automatically recognized as a Cloudflare nameserver.

Verified domain fields#

Field	Required	Description
Apex domain	Yes	The registered domain (for example, google.com, cloudflare.com). Must be unique. Do not include subdomains like www..
Brand	Yes	The brand this domain belongs to. Select from the existing brands list.
Secondary line	No	Additional context shown below the brand name (for example, "Cloud Division" or "San Francisco, CA").
Tertiary line	No	A third line of context (for example, "Subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.").
Subdomain treatment	Yes	How the brand applies to subdomains of this domain. See below.
Verification type	No	How the domain ownership was verified (for example, "dns", "cname", "manual").

Subdomain treatment#

This setting controls whether subdomains inherit the brand from the apex domain.

Setting	Behavior	Example
No subdomains	Only the exact apex domain gets the brand badge. Subdomains are treated as unverified.	google.com is verified, but mail.google.com is not.
All subdomains	The apex domain and all subdomains get the brand badge.	Both google.com and mail.google.com show the Google badge.
Pattern	Only subdomains matching a specific pattern get the brand badge.	Custom matching rules for complex domain structures.

When to use each setting#

No subdomains: Use for organizations where subdomains may belong to different entities (for example, shared hosting platforms where customer1.platform.com is not the platform).
All subdomains: Use for organizations that own all their subdomains (for example, anything.google.com always belongs to Google).
Pattern: Use for edge cases where only some subdomains belong to the brand.

Creating a verified domain#

Go to Verified Domains in the navigation.
Click Add Domain.
Enter the apex domain (for example, cloudflare.com). Do not include http://, www., or a trailing /.
Select a brand from the dropdown.
Add optional context in the secondary and tertiary line fields.
Choose a subdomain treatment.
Select a verification type (optional).
Click Save.

Tips#

Use the apex domain only. Enter google.com, not www.google.com or https://google.com.
Handle complex TLDs correctly. For domains like bbc.co.uk, the apex domain is bbc.co.uk (not co.uk).
The secondary line is a good place for context like "Enterprise email" or "CDN platform."
Check for duplicates before adding. Each apex domain can only appear once.

Editing a verified domain#

Go to Verified Domains in the navigation.
Find the domain in the list.
Click Edit in the Actions column.
Change the fields you want to update.
Click Save.

Deleting a verified domain#

Go to Verified Domains in the navigation.
Find the domain in the list.
Click Delete in the Actions column.
Confirm the deletion.

Deleting a verified domain removes the brand badge from domain lookups and stops NS record inheritance for nameservers under this domain.

Searching verified domains#

You can search and filter by:

Domain name — Partial matches work (for example, searching "google" finds google.com, google.co.uk).
Brand — Filter to show only domains for a specific brand.
Verification type — Filter by how the domain was verified.

Bulk operations#

You can import multiple verified domains at once:

Click Bulk Import.
Provide domain data in JSON or CSV format.
Review the preview.
Click Import.

You can also bulk-assign a brand or change the subdomain treatment for multiple domains.

How verified domains affect lookups#

When a user looks up a domain:

The tool extracts the apex domain from the query.
It checks the verified domains database for a match.
If the domain is verified, the brand badge appears at the top of the results.
If subdomain treatment is set to "all subdomains" and the user looked up a subdomain, the badge still appears.
The verified domain data is also used for NS record identification — nameservers under verified domains inherit the brand.

Revision history#

Every change to verified domains is recorded. Each revision shows:

What changed (brand, secondary/tertiary lines, subdomain treatment)
When it was changed
Who made the change
Previous and new version numbers