Domain name registrar BulkRegister (BulkRegister.com) announced on Tuesday that it has launched its BrandCrawler service, designed to monitor millions of Web sites for potential abuses of product names, brands and trademarks.

BrandCrawler, says BulkRegister, provides businesses with powerful intelligence on how brand names are used on the Web, helping companies confront the growing problem of online brand abusers, which can damage trademarks and reputations.

According to BulkRegister, BrandCrawler uses specialized spiders and search algorithms to scour its proprietary database of 40 million Web sites from all top-level domains and country domains. Along with regular text, links and logos, BrandCrawler detects unauthorized use of brands in hidden text and meta-tags.

"For businesses, the Internet is a vast, constantly shifting marketplace where brands and trademarks are exploited frequently, easily, and often invisibly," said BulkRegister CEO Thomas Cunningham. "BrandCrawler allows companies to pro-actively protect their online marketing presence, quickly identifying possible abusers, instead of finding out about them long after the damage is done."

BulkRegister says the service's reports identify possible abuses including cyber squatting, traffic diversion, unauthorized product distribution, counterfeiting and trademark infringement. BrandCrawler reports also include access to a site's WhoIs details to facilitate legal actions such as cease-and-desist letters.