Beware When Researching Domain Names - The Tasters are Watching!

Ever have the experience where you are looking for a domain name and you successfully find a short list of beautiful ones that your excited about registering and then several hours or days later when you are ready to do so, you find that they are all either taken or being offered at auction for $40.00, $50.00 or more and no longer available for $8.95 as a new or unregistered name ? Yes? Well so have I and I have had my suspicions .

I was reading about the explosion of "name tasting" sometimes called "domain kiting" that has risen to all-time highs this past August.

Domain tasting is a technique whereby sharp operators with deep pockets like the legendary Kevin Ham of Vancouver "The man who owns the internet" run programs that take advantage of the 5 day money back loophole in domain registration rules that allow the use of domain names for free for 5 days before you are locked in for a year .

This allows them to register a name automatically, for free, put up a web page with a half-dozen or so ads relevant to the name and wait to see if traffic is attracted to them and if they generate any Pay-Per-click revenue, then they dump the dogs and purchase only the money makers. It's beautiful, (sarcasm) they don't have to do anything more with the websites they keep -just let them work their magic and collect the money once a month. Since the practice is totally unrestricted, unregulated, legal and cost nothing, it is being done with names by the million now.

DNforums just reported that a new record of 8 million name transactions were recorded on a single day August 12, 2007 and 99% were domain kiters!

It was at MidasCode.com that I had my suspicions confirmed, they report that Bob Parsons himself owner of Godaddy is now stating on record that 92% of registrations at his huge site are unpaid domain kiting transactions - 32.3 million for the month of May alone ! And Mr. Parsons is not happy about it.

MidasCode reported that a technique of the domain kiters is to monitor domain searches done at large sites like Godaddy and DomainTools and snatch up the names that searchers successfully find as unclaimed and desirable before the searcher himself has a chance to secure the name for themselves .

It's happened to me several times now including the last when I was prevented from registering my own name as a domain . It really burns me up. Hopefully the wild west days won't last forever and some law will come to town. Until then - be advised!