Does Hosterstats.com steal domain ideas?

[sarah.kate]

I found a pretty good domain name that was available on godaddy. As I am new to all this, I wanted to check the background and see if it had ever been registered before, so I looked it up on hosterstats.com. It had a little history but had been deleted since 2013. By the time I went back to godaddy to register the name, it was gone!! I mean, I guess someone else could have been looking at the exact same name at the exact same time, but it seems suspicious to me. Has this happened to anyone else before??

 

[ezee]

Has Happened to me before ,thought the same thing was not HosterStats ,I just put in the name in namebio to see if there was any history and it was gone by the time I got back ,I guess there are many looking so it happens , I guess we win some we loose some ,happened this week as well with a handreg I had in my GoDaddy Basket ,it just disappeared when I got to check out ,and was not available to register which means someone snapped it up

 

[WeSell-Domains]

Although I hate to think it, it happens way too often for it to be total coincidence all the time in my opinion. I have no doubt that there are some unscrupulous website owners or it could be just their employees. It would be very easy to "monitor" what others are searching to register.

 

[sarah.kate]

could it be someone at GoDaddy?!

 

[offthehandle]

This is the reason you should use other tools, other than a registries search. I recall this same scenario happening to me in the 90's on Network Solutions. There were few alternatives back then, none of which I knew of at the time, unlike today. The minute you type in anything anywhere on the net, somebody is collecting and logging your data. How they use it and who has access to it varies all over the map. Ip address, location, thoughts, questions, predicted intent, keywords, everything. Then some or part of it is sold by subscription by g, majestic, semrush, kwfinder, etc. Nothing is free. Read all the privacy disclaimers. Find more ideas and keywords, move forward and stay positive. Sorry to hear you lost the name, but there are many millions more with 80k per day dropping. Oh, and for history of drops, use can use archive.org instead of those others you mentioned.

 

[CJ6]

FYI, GoDaddy is horrible about suggesting great domains that are not available.

 

[jmcc]

I found a pretty good domain name that was available on godaddy. As I am new to all this, I wanted to check the background and see if it had ever been registered before, so I looked it up on hosterstats.com. It had a little history but had been deleted since 2013. By the time I went back to godaddy to register the name, it was gone!! I mean, I guess someone else could have been looking at the exact same name at the exact same time, but it seems suspicious to me. Has this happened to anyone else before??

HosterStats is based on the zonefiles. If the domain name is knocked out of the zonefile then it is marked as having been deleted. This can happen for a number of reasons (the domain is pending deletion after not having been renewed, there is some legal action over the domain name etc). Sometimes registrants will remove the nameservers and this means that it does not appear in the zonefiles. It is possible that the domain name was a dark domain (no nameservers) since 2013. It might be a good thing to check the whois for the domain name and the registration date, the updated date and whether it has active nameservers. HosterStats does not steal domain ideas.

Regards...jmcc

 

[BrandSac]

to be honest it happened with me couple of times with different service (no need to share names), and the less harmful way that i found is to check via google, archive, trustedsource, uspto and adwords

 

[Haykay2005]

It has happened to me times without number

 

[Name Trader]

For me. You should have checked archive.org to see if it had ever been used before. Being registered, but unused, isn't a great recommendation, imho. It's better if it's actually been used, and what for? Use archive.org in the future.

 

[offthehandle]

http://www.circleid.com/posts/81082_network_solutions_front_running/

This has much historical abuse until it it was supposedly rectified, but as far as I am concerned the expired "auctions" abuse currently are abuse in parallel to domain name front running.

 

[DNGear]

I have checked so many names in hosterstats. It was never happened to me.

 

[urlurl]

too many times to count - just from checking name availability on GD, etc

'someone is always watching'

 

[sarah.kate]

HosterStats is based on the zonefiles. If the domain name is knocked out of the zonefile then it is marked as having been deleted. This can happen for a number of reasons (the domain is pending deletion after not having been renewed, there is some legal action over the domain name etc). Sometimes registrants will remove the nameservers and this means that it does not appear in the zonefiles. It is possible that the domain name was a dark domain (no nameservers) since 2013. It might be a good thing to check the whois for the domain name and the registration date, the updated date and whether it has active nameservers. HosterStats does not steal domain ideas.

Regards...jmcc

I really appreciate your confirming that. I like using hosterstats, I will be more careful of GoDaddy from now on.

 

[nomen]

In the past, I too thought that GD or whatever might be watching your searches. Not that much anymore (not that it's impossible). Just a coincidence when someone takes the name before you do IMO. More better (and versatile) the name, more likely this is to happen. A lot of availability checks on any given second. IMO.

However, I spread out all my WHOIS and especially bulk availability checks across many different services. And only check availability when I'm ready to buy on the spot. Just in case.

 

[Name Trader]

Not entirely accurate. But I check first on estibot.com and archive.org. Then I check on my main registrar, Dynadot. And by the fact that I've done these checks, I usually have enough info on whether I'm going to register the domain or not. If I need more info I check Majestic.com. But I'm not a big hand-regger any more. So it doesn't take up much time. It's quite rare that I do this in bulk, as well. none of these 4 organizations are known for "front-running". Unlike the front-running of some other organzations (true or false).