Getting a Taste Out of Domains - Registering Millions For Free

Nominet in the UK and ICANN (internationally) have expressed great concern over the fact that huge numbers of domain names have been registered without payment since early 2006. The number of domains registered for free is in the millions. 32 million out of 35 million registered domain names in April 2006 were taken for free!

These maneuvers were known as domain kiting and domain tasting. If you register a domain name multiple times and cancel it multiple times in rapid succession, you will end up owning it for free. This is domain kiting. A scheme of utilizing the five-day grace period to register a multitude of domains, domain tasting helps the schemer find out the most valuable domains to keep. The person who registered the domains decides what names to keep and which to delete without paying for them.

ICANN altered the policy and fee structure around August of 2008 to eliminate those schemes. To put an end to this, Google made the announcement that they would no longer place ads on domain names that were less than five days old. Domain kiters used to use Google AdSense to make money; however, since the Google ban and the ICANN fees, this practice has come to a screeching halt. However, the fees have only caused a small inconvenience for big time domain tasters.

Because of the high number of domains registered, the cost for deleting domains within a given grace period are not high compared to the costs of doing so. Therefore, domain name tasting is still profitable to the big time players. They just pay their fees and keep on going using other ad companies besides Google Ad Sense. AdBrite is one example. However, it is a problem for small players. For this reason, UK's Nominet created new regulations and rules to end contracts with registrants who continue this sort of practice. These steps have been fairly effective in halting the practice of abusing the system by employing domain tasting to try out domain names without having to pay for them.

Message Labs Intelligence issued a report in 2009 that said that domain tasting tactics had pretty much stopped, although, it is still possible to make some money with this technique. The end of domain tasting is discussed in this report. That is not quite completely correct. While the popularity of these practices has declined, it still occurs. The fact is that for international domains, ICANN still profits from domestic tasting when done correctly - which would be to watch it closely and do it on a large scale.

Stephen Grisham, Sr. is a copy writer for InfoServe Media, LLC. InfoServe Media is a web designer and web hosting company. If you would rather make a Do-It-Yourself website, InfoServe Media also offers a way to create a site yourself with a very powerful and easy to use site builder. They also provide domain registration, search engine optimization (SEO) and more.