Domain Tasting: Hard to Swallow
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Domain tasting and domain kiting have been highlighted by the press lately. They’re the bane of trademark holders, though they don’t always have to be. If you’re wondering what these practices are, why they’re so profitable, and whether you need to worry about them, keep reading.
Domain tasting is the practice of registering a domain for a very short period of time, loading it with pay per click ads from the major search engines, and seeing whether the return on investment is worth paying to keep the domain. If it isn’t, domain tasters (also called “domainers”) return the domain for a refund; if it is, they pay the $6 registration fee to keep it. Domain kiters don’t even pay the fee; they return the domain, then instantly re-register, in effect creating a continuously registered domain for nothing.
Both domain tasters and kiters typically register large numbers of domains at one time (on the order of thousands or more). The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has noted that five million domain names are registered every year – and of these, only about one percent are registered with the serious intent to keep that particular domain and build a web site, rather than just “taste” it.
It wasn’t always like this. Back in 2000, right around the time the web bubble burst, ICANN instituted a “grace period,” giving everyone who registers a domain name five days to decide whether they want to keep it; if a domain registrant changes their mind during that period, they can return the domain name for a full refund. At the time, most people had become somewhat disillusioned with the web, but early domain tasters worked on registering domains that were generic and generated type-in traffic with names like lionsandtigers.com or musclecars.com. These sites could generate traffic and eventually be sold for respectable sums of money.
At the time it took a while to find out whether these sites were worth keeping (registry root zone files were updated only every 12 hours). VeriSign went after this era’s domain tasters to stop what it considered an abusive practice; by 2002 it had tapered off. So why is it garnering attention again?
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