3/31/09: Death of Domain Tasting (Or is it?)
Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Domain tasting is down, and will take another hit in March. But that may not be the end of it…
Domain tasting — the practice of registering a domain to test for traffic and deleting it for a refund within a specified grace period — is down 84% since ICANN inacted a budget measure to make the scheme more expensive. But that was just a temporary fix. By March 31, 2009, all registrars will face even harsher penalties for engaging in the practice. But as I detail below, there are a couple ways around ICANN’s policies.
ICANN is beginning to implement its new “Add Grace Period Limits Policy” and has given registries and registrars until the end of March to comply. The policy was approved by ICANN’s Board back in June.
Under the new policy, registrars will not be entitled to refunds for any domain returned under the Add Grace Period (currently 5 days for .com) above and beyond 10% of domains registered. This will make domain tasting much more expensive.
There are a handful of ways a registrar could still engage in domain tasting after this policy is implemented:
1. A registrar with a large consumer base and low return ratio could run its own tasting operation, limited to 10% of domains it registers on behalf of consumers each month.
2. The policy allows registrars to request a one-time exemption from a registry, but this must be for “extraordinary circumstances”. These must be reported to ICANN.
3. A registrar can effectively “taste” domains expiring from its customers shortly after they expire. GoDaddy was doing this, but to its credit recently stopped the practice.
4. A registrar could be extremely judicious in the domains it tastes, only tasting the domains it believes have a 90% or better chance of having traffic.
VeriSign reports (pdf) show that only a handful of registrars appeared to still be engaged in traditional domain tasting as of August 2008, most notably eNom and NameKing.
Further Reading:
- NameKing Still King of Domain Tasting
- VeriSign Notifies Registrars About Domain Tasting Changes
- Domain Tasting 2.0
Tags: domain tasting, eNom, icann, nameking
Explain to me, what is the difference between the budget maneuver and the new AGP policy. It seems to me that both disallow ICANN fee rebates for AGP deletes over 10% of total net registrations. The new policy seems to have a more elaborate exceptions clause, but it looks like there’s some oversight of that process.
Is there any real reason to believe that tasting will be more or less frequent under the new policy than it has been over the last few months?
Larry, the new policy won’t let VeriSign refund even the registration fee. So they get hit with the ICANN fee and VeriSign’s registration fee. The economics of this make me think that it will become even harder to make a profit tasting…although it can still be done.
Ahh, thanks. That wasn’t really clear to me from the ICANN document.
Will this also stop enom from catching drops, tasting them then keeping or dropping withing days after the drop?
I see this all the time on drops. Is this enom or just a reseller?
Administrative Contact:
c/o eNom, Inc. on behalf of eNom, Inc. Customer
TBD eNom Customer TBD eNom Customer (legal@enom.com)
+1.4252744500
Fax: +1.4259744795
Correspondence can be sent to:
c/o eNom, Inc. 2002 156th Avenue NE
Bellevue, WA 98007
US
Rob – if it’s a name at eNom they could effectively still do it. If it’s from a different registrar and they catch it, it will become very expensive to play that game in the numbers it has done it in the past.
I am glad this less than honorable practice is being regulated. The less of those types of domains parked the more traffic for legitimate domain owners.
[...] required by a new ICANN policy, VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) has notified its registrars about changes to the Add Grace Period policy. [...]
[...] required by a new ICANN policy, VeriSign (NASDAQ: VRSN) has notified its registrars about changes to the Add Grace Period policy. [...]
[...] heard it all before. But as I’ve pointed out, new rules designed to kill domain tasting starting in April won’t kill it. Curtail it, yes. [...]