Domain Tasting is the practice of registering a domain with the intention of taking full advantage of ICANN’s “Creation Grace Period” (CGP), holding those domains for up to five days, analyzing traffic and revenue statistics on the within that 5-day period and discarding them for a full refund if they have poor gloss performance. Domains that have the potential to earn the minimum registration fee are maintained and parked or read with a smorgasbord of ppc ads.

Now this term has been around for some time, but there has never been any solid evidence of this practice that I know of.

The following is an excerpt from the online blog of Bob Parsons (CEO and Founder, Godaddy.com).

“DirectNIC registered more than 8.4 million domain names in April 2006, but only permanently registered, or paid for, 51.4 thousand of them. The trend was the same in March, when DirectNIC registered 7.6 million of names and only registered permanently, or paid: 52,500 What could DirectNIC be doing?

Sadly this is as close to actual proof as we can get, not definitive by any means but very interesting nonetheless.

We as webmasters must take proper precautions to avoid such a detrimental setback for a new project. The loss of an amazing keyword domain or worse, the best possible brand domain could mean your project is “chewed”.

Here are some tips to help you avoid domain testing and register the domain you want without any hassle.

1. Don’t look for your new domain without having the funds to purchase it readily available, you want to avoid tipping someone off about an unregistered name you have in mind, so make sure you have your credit card handy if you decide to do so. search, if you find a domain you want or even 10 domains, register them right there, this way you’re not giving anyone a chance to test them, and use the CGP to your advantage, cancel the 9 that don’t seem to fit, and save the gem .

2. If you choose to search without taking the necessary payment precautions and your domain is registered while you’re looking in the washing machine to see which pair of khakis you left your wallet in, don’t blame us, but take the right steps to get it back.

If you think it was a taster because the chances of it being recorded by someone else are almost incalculable, leave him alone, that’s right, leave him. If you think about it, testing domains is to see the traffic that the domain receives, if you see it over and over again you will never recover it because the taster will think that it has a guardian. So give up all searches for 1 week, after 1 week go to a different logger, look for it, if it’s there, log it and move on, if not sorry your luck, did all you could.

So, for everyone reading this, remember, if you think you’ve found “the” domain, make 100% sure you have the funds to register it and do it without thinking, it may be your last chance.