What is Domain Tasting?

Domain tasting was a numbers game played at industrial scale. Speculators used automated systems to register long lists of domain names, park ads on them, and keep only the few that earned. Everything else went back for a refund. ICANN shut the loophole in 2009, and today the term matters mostly as history: tasting is a big part of why new registrations now carry refund limits.

How domain tasting worked

Tasting ran on the Add Grace Period (AGP): the first 5 calendar days after a domain’s initial registration, during which the registrar can delete the name and receive a full credit for the registration fee from the registry. A name deleted this way goes straight back into the available pool. The AGP appears in some, but not all, gTLD registry agreements, and it was meant as a no-cost way to undo typos, errors, and certain fraudulent registrations. Country-code TLDs set their own rules entirely.

Tasters treated those 5 free days as market research. They registered names in bulk, measured type-in traffic, and placed ads on the parked pages. ICANN’s August 2009 report describes the test plainly: would online ads on the address return more than the registration fee, typically between $6 and $7, over the course of a year? Names that passed were kept. Names that failed went back free of charge.

Why domain tasting ended

The scale became impossible to ignore. At the peak, per the same August 2009 ICANN announcement, millions of .com names were registered and returned in a single month. Ordinary owners paid the price: a name that accidentally lapsed was extremely hard to get back, because automated systems kept picking it up and dropping it, and the web filled with pages showing nothing but ads.

ICANN responded in two steps: a budget provision approved by its board, then the AGP Limits Policy, which registries had to implement by March 31, 2009. Under the policy, a registry won’t credit a registrar for AGP deletions above 10% of that registrar’s net new registrations in a month, or 50 domain names, whichever is greater, unless it grants an exemption for documented extraordinary circumstances. Those limits govern registry-to-registrar credits only; what a registrar refunds its own customers stays a matter of its own cancellation policy. The change flipped the economics: the more names a company tasted, the more it paid. Measured across implementing registries, AGP deletes fell 99.7% between June 2008 and April 2009.

The practical takeaway: don’t plan around a refund window. Research a domain name before you buy it, and register a name only when you intend to keep it.

Domain tasting vs. kiting and cybersquatting

Three practices often get lumped together, and they aren’t the same:

• Domain tasting: registering a name once, testing its traffic and ad revenue during the 5-day AGP, and deleting it for a refund if it doesn’t earn. Effectively dead since 2009.
• Domain kiting: deleting and re-registering the same name over and over, chaining grace periods so the registration fee is never truly paid. The same refund limits made large-scale kiting uneconomical.
• Cybersquatting: registering a name tied to someone else’s trademark in the hope the owner will pay to get it back. Still happens, and still risky for the squatter.

Domain flipping is different again: buying a name outright to resell at a profit on the domain aftermarket. Flipping never depended on a refund window. Drop catching, the practice people most often confuse with tasting today, is a race to register names that have already been deleted and released, not brand-new ones. No ICANN policy forbids flipping or drop catching, but that isn’t blanket legal cover: whether either crosses a line depends on your jurisdiction and your conduct, and using a name to trade on someone else’s trademark, commit fraud, or register in bad faith invites the same disputes as cybersquatting.