Google to kill domain tasting?

[Devil_Dog]

http://blog.domaintools.com/2008/01/google-to-kill-domain-tasting/

 

[netmeg]

Will Google Kill Domain Tasting?

Blog posts all over the SEO and SEM world today claim that Google's about to kill Domain Tasting.

Read at your leisure:

http://blog.domaintools.com/2008/01/google-to-kill-domain-tasting/

I never tried it myself.

 

[madpoet]

Interesting, though it won't affect me. I'm not opposed to seeing domain tasting go bye bye.

 

[gawnd]

The 5 day period has its place - I've tasted a few domains but more because I was on the fence about the name, wanted to sleep on it and not get front ran. Tasting in and of itself is not a problem in my book - kiting on the other hand is. I think this is really aimed at the kiters.

 

[Prof. Goldbloom]

The 5 day period has its place - I've tasted a few domains but more because I was on the fence about the name, wanted to sleep on it and not get front ran. Tasting in and of itself is not a problem in my book - kiting on the other hand is. I think this is really aimed at the kiters.

Yes, but the type of tasting they're trying to stop is where a registrar tastes millions of names at a time...and then keeps the ones that do well. The battle against tasting isn't leveled against the end user. It's leveled against the mass user.

I realize that some of this bleeds over into kiting, but they are separate issues. When you can automatically pick up thousands of dropped names to see if you can ride off the SER and click-through traffic for a dead site, the industry could suffer (and is suffering, in a sense).

Domainers who taste an occasional name aren't going to cause a problem for anyone. But if ICANN or Verisign ever decide to put a stop to it, you can bet that domainers are going to feel the ripples.

 

[Mark]

I like it

Though - there are other ways for Tasters to monetize and test still .... But it is a good start. I know it would be hard to implement and check for on open sites such as Forums etc ... But I'd love to see Domain Selling and Parking Venues place a 6 or 7 day waiting period on all newly added Domains. Wouldn't hurt my feelings at all ..

 

[jehnidiah]

Finally! I'm so glad they're doing this!

 

[metronome]

hmm, wonder why peoples hate domain tasting so much, it is not like only a few can do it.

I myself do not hate it, do not love it either, but as long as tasting is open and doable for everyone that's in these business, I think it is fair.

 

[jehnidiah]

hmm, wonder why peoples hate domain tasting so much, it is not like only a few can do it.

I myself do not hate it, do not love it either, but as long as tasting is open and doable for everyone that's in these business, I think it is fair.

I hate it for the same reason I hate the ability for companies or individuals to scoop up domains en masse and re-sell them immediately: it oligopolizes the market quickly and puts all the beginning power into the hands of very few big companies. I believe that people should be able to do things, but in moderation, but as it stands companies can do both tasting and domain snapping just as soon as they're available, effectively killing end-user/small-reseller competition and putting all the power at the top, where they'll charge stupidly large amounts for domains, and/or even auction them off to tons of people.

It just strikes me as unfair, and I'd rather there be limits on how many particular companies or individuals can pick up per day. High limits, granted, but limits nonetheless so that it would injure both of those markets I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

 

[Mike]

I'm not going to get into details anymore - done that too many times as it is - but i'm in absolute favor of domain tasting.

Unfortunately, Google, the obvious king of the internet world, will yet find another way to make a domainer's life more difficult.
It's not just that they already increase rates for ad words upon their choice and unidentifiable parameters, now they're going to stab us one more time. Way to go, Google. Bite the hand that feeds you.
Frankly, i'm hoping that MS, which is by now the smaller evil of the two, scoops up Yahoo, Ask and eBay and levels the playing field. Google needs to be put in their place.
You're welcome to flame me for that, I'll continue to stand behind my opinion.

M.

 

[metronome]

I hate it for the same reason I hate the ability for companies or individuals to scoop up domains en masse and re-sell them immediately: it oligopolizes the market quickly and puts all the beginning power into the hands of very few big companies. I believe that people should be able to do things, but in moderation, but as it stands companies can do both tasting and domain snapping just as soon as they're available, effectively killing end-user/small-reseller competition and putting all the power at the top, where they'll charge stupidly large amounts for domains, and/or even auction them off to tons of people.

It just strikes me as unfair, and I'd rather there be limits on how many particular companies or individuals can pick up per day. High limits, granted, but limits nonetheless so that it would injure both of those markets I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I understand your concern, but in my opinion, limitation and/or prohibition of domain tasting will not change the condition where only big companies or individual could scoop up domains en masse.

let's say the big guys are prohibited to do domain tasting, I don't think it would effect them, actually they will just buy all of the domains that appears good in their database anyway, test them (and since they bought the domains they will taste it longer), and then throw the ones those are bad away, about the loss because they cant taste it, they could just cover the price by charging even larger amount.

and actually won't that be even worse for the small reseller and end user? since tasting is prohibited for them, they will actually decrease the supply of good domain name even faster. well ya the demand for good domains will be larger and profiting small resellers with good domain(tho it wont be too much), but actually that will still hurt the end user, not only that, these will bring only small effect to big guys, not only that, actually these big guys could make even more money.

 

[jehnidiah]

I understand your concern, but in my opinion, limitation and/or prohibition of domain tasting will not change the condition where only big companies or individual could scoop up domains en masse.

let's say the big guys are prohibited to do domain tasting, I don't think it would effect them, actually they will just buy all of the domains that appears good in their database anyway, test them (and since they bought the domains they will taste it longer), and then throw the ones those are bad away, about the loss because they cant taste it, they could just cover the price by charging even larger amount.

and actually won't that be even worse for the small reseller and end user? since tasting is prohibited for them, they will actually decrease the supply of good domain name even faster. well ya the demand for good domains will be larger and profiting small resellers with good domain(tho it wont be too much), but actually that will still hurt the end user, not only that, these will bring only small effect to big guys, not only that, actually these big guys could make even more money.

Yeh, I know what you're saying, I guess we're both speculating because no one really knows what will/could happen. But the "little guy" in me is just inherently bothered any time I read about a company overtaking rights/allowances that I or others once had.

 

[kriss05]

IMO big guys will find the way to monetize their tasted millions of domains ANYWAY. They have money, resources and everything else to get profit from their domains. Who will have problems are we, small domainers who own few hundreds of such domains.

IMO tasting itself is normal way to find good domains untill people breake TM laws. Well, it is sad that big companies bought millions of nice domains for tasting but:

1. there are always many available domains with nice traffic so if someone makes research carefully and tastes some domains to check the traffic - this is a good way to find valuable domains for anyone.

2. big guys have enough money to get alot of domains, but the same is the case in real estate, for example. Do you hate those who can buy villa for $xxx,xxx,xxx? or who can buy ship or aircraft for $xxx,xxx,xxx? How many cheap nice homes are available? All have been sold to those who have money but you don't hate those who owns hundreds or thousands of such homes? or do you? But real estate market is good or bad then? This is just business, not good, not bad.

3. during the time I didn't know about domain tasting I got a lot of ugly, crappy, useless domains. I'm not rich, I'm a little domainer. When I discovered domain tasting, I found lot of nice domains, some of them having nice traffic, some of them being sold, AND: those who bought them got full one year untill expiration, so if you are buying domains not because of their age, this is very nice - to get domain with one year and NOTE: in grace period so you can resell it with one full year before expiration. What I want to say is that domain tasting is a great thing for LITTLE domainers as well!

I hate those who breake TM's very clearly and directly, I hate those who grabbed lot of adult, gambling domains for tasting and hate those who taste celebrity name domains because those people make Google and, generally, anyone think of domain tasters (and domainers btw) as evil people. But IMO there are evil people in any business but as I said business itself is not black and is not white - people make colors.

kriss05

 

[metronome]

@jehnidiah

I understand>.< I am little fry too:D

I always hear something like :"the rich ones getting richer and richer, the poor ones tend to get poorer and poorer" guess, this happens too in domain name:D.

There is a story like these: Since there are so many rich peoples owning nice and high-profiting assets, a lot of small fries lament them because all of nice assets are gone and being swalled by these big guys, and these big guys sell the assets at a really high price. Government heard the small fries' pleas and increased the tax against the big guys for their nice assets(1% tax increase for EACH nice assets they have), in hope to slow down the big guys. The small fries were happy during that time, but hell, it happens only a shortwhile, and actually the big guys make even more money, not only that, somehow their assets increase in price even higher, and weirdly, there are always buyer for their assets; and it is now even harder for the small fries to become the big guys>.<~~

I don't really know what will happen if domain tasting is gone from the world, but, I hope they don't follow the story above; but I myself a small fry will just have to use whatever provided by these world. If domain tasting is provided to anyone, I think we need to push aside our love hate relationship with domain tasting and use these service for our purpose as much as we can>.<

@kriss05

there is a saying that there are a lot of niches that the big companies overlook, it is either because it is not too important for them to have it or may be because they don't know about that niche.

 

[edit]

A simple way around this for domain tasting companies is to forward a 'tasting' domain to an established domain. Google ad feeds appear, they get site statistics showing so many hits from 'tasting' domain.

Nothing changes in this scenario, just Google protects themselves from whatever litigation they are afraid is coming.

 

[KingDon]

Lets say, I want to push a national sales campaign for our new Widget, and my company sets up a revolving pool of 100,000 tasting domains. I never spend my money, it just sits there as collateral; but I get to advertise 365 days a year, and maybe reach a hundred thousand, million people per day.


As if tasters really care about losing, the parsley on top of their steak. Yup, they’ll have to enjoy their Pina Colladas without the fancy umbrella; that aught to break them. Yup, it’s all over for those tasters; we finally got them.

Mission Accomplished!!!

 

[metronome]

Lets say, I want to push a national sales campaign for our new Widget, and my company sets up a revolving pool of 100,000 tasting domains. I never spend my money, it just sits there as collateral; but I get to advertise 365 days a year, and maybe reach a hundred thousand, million people per day.


As if tasters really care about losing, the parsley on top of their steak. Yup, they’ll have to enjoy their Pina Colladas without the fancy umbrella; that aught to break them. Yup, it’s all over for those tasters; we finally got them.

Mission Accomplished!!!

I think that's not domain tasting....
I think it is called domain kiting:D

kiting means like I register a domain, and then just 1 hour before the grace period is done, I delete it and then reregister, so it can rotate for 1 year without actually spending money.

I do agree that google accomplish its mission successfully to prevent the domain kiting if they do this.

but if domain tasting has to go, that's really unfortunate, they can make it that domain tasting can only be used to one time only per domain for each person, so they can not do domain kiting.

 

[deleted984054565403]

Google to Combat Tasting/Kiting

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080125...ss_sampling;_ylt=AucDbZYhAo9Ymcqa5v2eng5k24cA

NEW YORK - The online advertising leader Google Inc. said Friday it would help make it less lucrative to tie up millions of Internet addresses using a loophole and keep those domain names from legitimate individuals and businesses.

Over the next few weeks, Google will start looking for names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within a five-day grace period for full refunds.

Google's AdSense program would exclude those names so no one can generate advertising revenue from claiming them temporarily, a practice known as domain name tasting — the online equivalent of buying expensive clothes on a charge card only to return them for a full refund after wearing them to a party.

"We believe that this policy will have a positive impact for users and domain purchasers across the Web," Google spokesman Brandon McCormick said.

The company said it notified participants via e-mail Thursday.

Name tasting exploits a grace period originally designed to rectify legitimate mistakes, such as registrants mistyping the domain name they are about to buy. But with automation and a burgeoning online advertising market, entrepreneurs have generated big bucks exploiting the policy to test hoards of names, keeping just the ones that turn out to generate the most revenue.

The practice ties up millions of domain names at any given time, making it more difficult for legitimate individuals and businesses to get a desirable name.

Jay Westerdal, who earlier wrote about Google's change on his DomainTools blog, said in an interview that the ban should make domain name tasting far less lucrative. He noted that Google's chief rival, Yahoo Inc., already tries to ban tasted addresses that infringe on trademarks and account for much of the problem.

"If Google and Yahoo are not monetizing these types of sites, I think domain tasting as we know it will come to a screeching halt," Westerdal said. "The alternative advertising is just not as effective."

In October, Yahoo sued several domain name registration companies over tasting, accusing them of targeting trademarks owned by Yahoo and other leading brands. The lawsuit is pending in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Dell Inc. and BMW have filed similar federal lawsuits in Florida.

The Internet's key oversight agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, already is looking into name tasting and will soon ask a committee to review the issue and craft recommendations. A public comment period on draft procedures closes Monday.

The operators of the ".org" suffix already won approval to charge companies that make too many returns. The number of deletions dropped to 152,700 in June, compared with 2.4 million in May, after the new fee took effect.

 

[Sir Regalot]

Google cuts ad incentives for exploiting domain name loophole

http://www.fresnobee.com/state_wire/business/story/350013.html

 

[shockie]

:tu:

(i'm not a fan of tasting)

 

[john645]

Google New "No tasting" policy

What will Google new policy of not serving ads on domains registered within the last few days have on parking revenues? Will it go up much? Do you think the parking companies will pass the revenue to the clients or keep it mostly for themselves?