Domain tasting is down 84% since ICANN implemented its 20 cent fee.
In June ICANN approved a budget measure designed to curtail domain name tasting (registering a domain, checking it for traffic, and then deleting it within the first 5 days for a full refund if traffic wasn’t high enough) and domain kiting (registering a domain and then serially deleting it and re-registering it every 5 days to avoid paying registration fees).
The budget measure called for the 20 cent ICANN fee to not be refunded to a given registrar if more than 10% of that registrar’s domains were deleted during the 5 day “Add Grace Period” in a month. The purpose is a stopgap until a full Add Grace Period policy can be implemented.
The results are in and the fee is working. ICANN’s latest registry reports show that in June there were 17.6 million domains names deleted during the add grace period. In July, after the fee was implemented, add grace period deletions fell to only 2.8 million. Of those 2.8 million deleted, 2.6 million were subject to the fee.
ICANN anticipates the number of add grace period deletions to continue to fall. Registry reports are made public three months after the end of the month, so more data will be available in early December.
RegFeeNames.com says
This is great News!
I dont agree with domain tasting!
I think people taking advantage of the system and making millions per year give us domainers a bad name!
Regards,
Robbie
Founder
RegFeeNames.com
Jamie says
520,000 more reasons for ICANN to smile per month!
Rob Sequin says
There have been a lot more domains dropping for hand regs these days.
Thanks for the update.
PS Anyway to have the check box checked by default so I get notified of followup comments?
I vote to have it checked by default.
M. Menius says
Attacking domain tasting is a good start. Continue the clean up. Institute instant loss of accreditation for any registrar that both warehouses their customers’ domain names while publicly selling domain registrations and other internet services.
Dan says
I do not think eNom got the memo, they are on their 4th day of picking up all the drops with their vacuum.
Andrew says
Rob – good question. I’ll look into it.
Mike says
BTW, Matt Bentley of Sedo stepped down as well earlier this summer. He was involved with the company since 2002. Was one of the brightest guys there…
Get the picture?
Best,
Mike
http://www.wannadevelop.com
Dan says
eNom now grabbed all daily drops for the 5th consecutive day. This must be costing them a pretty penny in fees.
John McCormac says
The effect of domain tasting being curtailed was dramatic. The graph for .com in 2008 ( http://www.hosterstats.com/Detailed-com-Statistics-2008.php ) shows the fall off of domain tasting. The zone figures are checked on the first day of each month. Compared to the stats for 2007, the .com TLD is stabilising. Before PIR introduced its ‘restocking fee’ for .org in 2007, some tasting registrars were almost registering the entire .org drop. After the fee, some of these tasters completely stopped tasting and their .org counts went to zero.
However an important point is that the growth of .com is now more apparent. And .com is not growing as quickly as the combined growth of some of the large ccTLDs. With PPC revenues falling and the lack of the easy credit that fuelled the domain name boom of the last few years, .com might be in for a rough time next year.
While eliminating registrar warehousing might be a good thing, I don’t think that there are any rules against this activity with .com and .net. Technically registrar warehousing is against the rules in .eu ccTLD but the registry (Eurid) is so incompetent that it doesn’t even bother to take any action. The problem with ICANN and warehousing is that there are probably too many vested interests to allow any domainer-friendly regulation to be enacted. And the trend of many large portfolio domainers becoming their own registrars may cause problems should warehousing be regulated against by ICANN. It took ICANN years to come close to resolving the tasting/kiting problem and this is only a temporary move.