A colleague of mine Paul Cherry from Boomerang.com.au gave me a heads up on some sneaky activity that Network Solutions have started do. It’s called Registrar Domain “Tasting” which is the practice of a registrar holding a domain when someone does an availability search. So if you search for a domain at Network Solutions, they will register it before you’ve even purchased it yourself and if you try and register it elsewhere it will be unavailable. You can then only register it from Network Solutions who then put the price up when you return to buy it off them the next day until they release it on day 5.
Try it yourself, goto Network Solutions and search for a domain - try something with 3 or 4 different words in it just so you can test it. Then do a availability search at Melbourne IT and do a search on the same domain name…
Basically there is a five day “Grace” period at the start of any domain registration which allows the registrar to refund a domain and return it back to the available domain pool. During this period you can check traffic stats, previous referrals and in this particular case, hold it ransom to get customers to buy only off them if they search for it.
Check out Domain Name News for more information about registrar domain “tasting”.
Hi Christian,
This process by Network Solutions is more like “hostage taking” than “domain tasting”. As you said, they are basically holding that name hostage so you can not go elsewhere (like GoDadddy) and buy the name cheaper.
I believe their standard price is $10 if you register that day. The worst thing is, if you return to Network Solutions the next day to purchase the name, the increase the “ransom” to about $40!!
The process of “domain tasting” is usually performed by registrants to check if the names have existing traffic, type-in traffic, inbound links etc.
Basically the registrant can buy thousands of names at a time, record 4 or 5 days of data and then drop the useless ones back on to the open market for free. This means they are refunded the initial registration cost.
The 5 days of data is then extrapolated over 1 month or a year and then used to evaluate if that domain could be profitable.
For example, if you got 1 type-in per day on a name you are tasting (over 5 days) you could reasonably assume it would get 365 type-ins per year. Could you convert that 300+ visitors into more than the cost of registration? If yes, you keep that name. If no, back it goes into the pool and it cost you nothing for the information.
In the past, domain registrants would do this over their first year of data (1 year rego) but it would cost them then registration fee, they just have to decide whether to renew.
Many places still do this, as 1 unique per MONTH might be enough to monetize and warrant renewal of that domain name, but you might not see that visit come in on a 5 day “taste”.
For more information about domain monetisation make sure you keep up to date with my posts on http://www.PaulCherry.com.au
Thanks,
Paul Cherry