The end of domain tasting
November 14th, 2008
Domain tasting is a practice of systematic abuse of ICANN’s 5 day “grace period” (Add Grace Period or AGP) policy, which allows a registrant to register a domain name and return it for a full refund within 5 days. For years, many online advertisers, some registrars and spammers have been taking advantage of this policy to register hundreds of thousands of domains on a daily basis, try them out for a few days and then return back to the registry for a full refund. Some registrars have even built new businesses by having a continuous ‘float’ of millions of domains kept in their portfolio that are exchanged daily for ones that can result in better search engine placement and generate more advertising revenue as a result.
After much pressure and debate, ICANN’s board at its meeting in Paris this past June has adopted a recommendation by the GNSO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) Council which put in force limits on the impact and scale of domain tasting.
Three months into that policy being put in place, the results are evident to see from the following graph of daily domain registrations within the .com registry
Note the rapid decline in the slope of the graph that begins in late June. ICANN itself today reported that AGP deletes are down by 84% since June. This means that there are now fewer daily scurrilous or even malicious domain registrations and more domains left for legitimate use.
However, it’s important to realize that this measure is only a temporary short-term solution that the ICANN board had put in place until a permanent consensus on domain tasting can be achieved in the community. The proposal for the permanent change is now available for public comment and we encourage everyone to give ICANN their thoughts on this practice and the proposed policy change.
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