Largest Domain Tasting Day Ever

[PalmBeach]

August 12th, 2007 by

Jay Westerdal

August 12, 2007 was the largest Domain Tasting day ever Domain Tools reported. They recorded over 8 Million Transactions today. This is a new high. We have never seen 8 Million transactions on one day before. That would be either an add or delete. Over 99 percent of these transactions are completely free and use the 5 day grace period to test domain names for traffic before they are purchase for a long term buy. Sometimes organizations will taste a domain name for multiple 5 day windows. They can tie up a domain for a long time and test it longer. Domain Tasting seems to be getting worse, the number of transactions continues to grow. I can see a day when more domain names exist in the 5 day grace period then exist as real registrations.

 

[Domainate.com]

Such an abominable practice. I don't know why ICANN allows it because it's really brought this industry down a notch. Imagine if in the stock market you could "taste" stocks and what kind of chaos that would cause. There's absolutely no justification for ICANN to keep a blind eye to this practice.

 

[acesfull]

It will be interesting to see how long "free" domain tasting will be allowed to go on, before limits are reached.

 

[Bill Roy]

'Limits' are simple, ZERO!

I totally agree with NT on this one.

 

[Focus]

Domain tasting is going to hurt us all by bringing more publicity and persecution to the typo/ppc pot of gold at the end of the domain rainbow.. :sad:

 

[nameadvertising.com]

the difference is, when we domainers buy and sell, we own those properties. domain tasters merely hold the names without having legitimate ownership. if they sell their names on the 6th day, they are in my opinion legitimate owners.

no one ever talks about domain tasters losing out on dropping names simply because it has no traffic. none of the names we sell have potentially any traffic to speak of. if you register names, you must know exactly who your end buyer will be and what you can expect in a year of two.

domain tasters do not take this opportunity. good business instincts always will triump over stats. we are proof of that.

icann is made up of a bunch of clowns. icann, the united nations - all the same.

 

[PRED]

sooner it ends the better imo
it pisses me off

 

[GAMEFINEST]

icannt do it

 

[Domainate.com]

I simply feel that tatsing is as legitimate as grabbing domains to sell later.Its just an extension of the same business.

Domain tasting is purely an exploit of a policy that was meant to assist people that accidentally registered the wrong name. The way domain tasting is done is generally kiting, continually registering and re-registering a domain name to basically own it for long periods of time without paying a penny for it (sure the money is tied up while they have it, but imagine if you could own a domain for months and then get a full refund). This is NOT an extension of the business of buying and selling domains or even buying domains for traffic as neither are exploiting anything - simple first-come first-served ownership of domains. If anything, it's an extension of piracy.

Again I say imagine if there was a similar policy in the stock market (not all that comparable but another form of investment), where people could get a full refund within 5 days of buying a stock if they so choose. "Kiting" then would be continually buying and refunding a stock until the price goes up, then selling it. Besides the fact that it would break the system, you don't see anything wrong with that?

Morality aside, I'm more concerned with what it's doing to the industry. There's enough corruption with registrars in the industry overstepping their bounds - does there really need to be massive tasting/kiting piling it on? What happens when REALLY big companies that don't mind tying up HUNDREDS of millions of dollars see what's happening with tasting and get involved. Continually tie up almost every reasonable quality name left until people registering new names are either forced to register crap like zqwxoqopwiqop.com or buy a name on the aftermarket for thousands of dollars? That's one huge difference between kiting and what the rest of us do - we may buy names that we're not using only to sell them for a large profit to companies, but we aren't forcing them into buying from us...they're always free to register what's available, and in a lot of cases, 2-3 word domains with their name are available, or at worst their company name + their product .com or their company .net. Kiting is making the reasonable names that are available unavailable without really paying for them, getting all the benefits of ownership and leaving the utter crap left for everyone else. It needs to be nipped in the bud before it gets any more out of hand.

 

[Theo]

icannt do it

coming soon, patience!

 

[PRED]

coming soon, patience!

LOL
i know what you're talking about :smilewinkgrin:

 

[mulligan]

...Domain tasting is purely an exploit of a policy that was meant to assist people that accidentally registered the wrong name....

Not entirely correct ... Also to protect registrars and by definition ICANN from fraudulent transactions using stolen CC's and the like.

You who are constantly bitching and complaining about the issue would be better employed in bringing your concerns directly to ICANN instead of whining amongst yourselves like a bunch of old women in a knitting circle.

ICANN are ASKING for input on the issue so why not take the opportunity to present your arguments to those that are the policymakers?

http://www.circleid.com/posts/070811_icann_investigating_domain_tasting/

http://www.icann.org/announcements/announcement-2-10aug07.htm

Do any of you actually bother to make yourselves familiar with the organisation that controls what you are doing and has the biggest influence on your business?

 

[GAMEFINEST]

Who here domain taste?

 

[harleyx]

Amen! Put up or shut up. Start a petition already.

 

[PalmBeach]

Bob Parsons says, "Just over 35 million names were registered for the month of May. Of those just over 2.7 million were permanent registrations. That means that 92.3% of all domain names registered were part of a scam now known as domain kiting. These names were kept off of the market, they were used to generate search engine revenue - AND BECAUSE OF A LOOPHOLE ICANN REFUSES TO ELIMINATE - those 32.3 million names were used without being paid for.".

Bob Parsons has been corresponding with ICANN, VeriSign, and Public Interest Registry since 2004. "For the third time I am appealing to ICANN to step up and take action to put an end to domain kiting. The ICANN meeting in Marrakech, Morocco should provide the perfect forum for the ICANN Board to put an end to this travesty. The Board showed that it was able to step up and take action when it came to approving a lopsided deal for VeriSign. I see no reason why it can't do the same when it comes to doing something for the good of the domain name system and the Internet. After all, isn't that what ICANN is supposed to be about? " Remarks Bob Parsons in his article.

 

[Theo]

It's not an ICANN problem, it's the Registries. PIR (of .ORG) imposes a restocking fee (I think it's $0.25).

 

[Bill Roy]

Who here domain taste?

Not me.

 

[PalmBeach]

:fencingomain Tasting leave a bad taste in the mouths of some

ICANN's not sure if it likes this practice, as it does tend to screw with their numbers (and revenues). They put out the following notice over the weekend:

In view of the increase in domain tasting (definitions below), the GNSO Council recently considered an Issues Report on Domain Tasting and resolved to form an ad hoc group for further fact-finding on the effects of this practice. The ad hoc group has prepared these questions to assist in gathering facts and opinions, while inviting both qualitative and quantitative input.
​

Questions Asked

 

[alexsimon]

Today I regged a typo, and some minutes ago, I got a refund and registered the right domain. It was so good that I could live up with this 5 day grace period, that Dynadot gave me. So, in my pov tasting should not be totally eliminated.

On the other hand, I agree with NameTrader, this practice makes our industry not look credible.

Maybe a rule in which a domain cannot be tasted by the same organization/individual twice? But there would be some problems with the implementation of this practice. How could you control that.

Alex

 

[PRED]

Today I regged a typo, and some minutes ago, I got a refund and registered the right domain. It was so good that I could live up with this 5 day grace period, that Dynadot gave me. So, in my pov tasting should not be totally eliminated.

On the other hand, I agree with NameTrader, this practice makes our industry not look credible.

Maybe a rule in which a domain cannot be tasted by the same organization/individual twice? But there would be some problems with the implementation of this practice. How could you control that.

Alex

Maybe allow 1 per day per account? That's enough for anyone
Tbh i only ever regged 2 typos in my life,1 in '99 & it was a .co.uk
It prob cost me a fortune, not the one i regged, but the one i didn't :worried: