You may have noticed the over the last few years it is becoming increasingly difficult to purchase a domain. For me, and possibly many others, searching for available domains has become a part of the process of naming a company or project – a very frustrating process at that. Its fair enough that people get a domain before I do but it is annoying when it’s being used to host advertising and as a link through to other sites. An example is niqui.com – a domain that I would like, for obvious reasons.
In his talk at BarCampLondon 2, Mike Davies spoke about the areas surrounding domains and domain tasting during his talk on Black Hat SEO. This was the first time I had been exposed to some of these concepts. I was really surprised at how it works and what some companies can get away with.
Domain tasting explained
There is a 5 day period where a domain registrar can register a domain and not have to pay for it or a cancellation fee. They purchase large blocks of domains and put up adverts to sample the traffic. They monitor the traffic and sales that go through each domain and continue in a cycle of registering and releasing the domain name. In April 2006, out of 35 million registrations, only a little more than 2 million were permanent or actually purchased. — Wikipedia on Domain tasting. More about Entrepreneurs profit from internet domain loophole.
Common misspellings
We all make typos. We all misspell words on the odd occasion, some more than others. Sometimes we don’t even notice. Typing a domain into the browser is no different. I have noticed a big increase in the number of times that the site that is loaded is a site with advertising. We can tell (mostly) that it is not the real company and just advertising but the average user in the wild may not realise. If you leave the “s” out of waitrose.com/ you get waitroe.com/. It links to the Waitrose site but it goes through an Ad server first. The Waitrose example is, however not nearly as bad as some of the others.
Cybersquatting
Wikipedia on Cybersquatting as:
Cybersquatting, according to the United States federal law known as the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad-faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else. The cybersquatter then offers to sell the domain to the person or company who owns a trademark contained within the name at an inflated price.
US retailer sues domain name registrars
I was really interested to read about a US retailer that is suing domain name registrars on out-law.com.
US retailer Neiman Marcus is suing two domain name registrars for more than $12 million over their registration of names containing variations of its brand. The two linked companies are accused of improperly registering more than 40 domain names.
I hope that this case creates awareness about domain registrars and some of the underhanded tactics that are used.
7 ResponsesLeave a comment ?
It annoys me too, Andy Bud was talking about the frustration of not being bale to use the same username on all sites, but this is even more annoying when its being done by bots.
Very interesting read, Niqui. I wasn’t aware of the whole domain tasting thing.
South Africa ended up suing, costing them a fortune, because some enterprising company
had bought the name of http://www.southafrica.com.
I think South Africa lost actually and ended up taking their case to Switzerland to try and negotiate a deal. I think they still didn’t make it. So if a domain name for a country isn’t sacret, what is. On the other hand, why should people with some kind of future vision, not benefit, when a country can’t be bothered to secure their own domain name, because they are too narrow minded to get it that the internet is here to stay and will grow.
While it’s frustrating, I agree that someone who buys hoover.com (to perhaps chronicle their obsession with the dam) shouldn’t have to fight off a vacuum company that thinks it automatically has the right to that domain. The ‘domain tasting’ is new to me as well, and mirrors the ‘real world’ practice of supermarkets buying up land that could potentially be used by comptitors, and doing nothing with it.
That is interesting Niqui, i didnt know about domain tasting, though i’d heard many stories from that days of old about typing domain names into registrars and then subsequently finding that domain just so happens to be registered by someone working for the registrar!!
The whole thing is a frustrating business, especially, as you say, when all they’re doing is sitting on the domain with advertising, and not even using it for anything constructive.
I’ve got the same problem with keith.com.
Something worth having a read through is this article by Mike Davidson:
http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain
@wetwebwork
I completely agree with your point about hoover.com. I also agree that southafrica.com does not automatically belong to South Africa.
Just because people do it does not make it acceptable or ethical. If people and companies were well behaved then we would not have to have legal systems and police. Unfortunately it seems to be the way of the world. I think the first step is to create more awareness.
Did you all forget already about Mike Row and how Microsoft made him give up his domain?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/19/offbeat.mike.rowe.soft.ap/