Insider Domain Trading
Being in the hosting business, we have to buy domain names. Everyone needs a domain name….Even your aunt selling widgets. Ideally, it would be nice to register auntieswidgets.com (as opposed to auntieswidgets1.com), but we have started noticing a disturbing trend.
Normally, when you go to look up a domain name, almost inevitably the one you want isn’t available due to domain parking or prospecting. This practice isn’t all that bad, mainly because some industrious individual had the forethought to register something that was going to be the next big name or brand. Take www.ie7.com for example. Anyone who watched the trend of IE5 and IE6 could safely bet that IE7 was on the horizon. However, since Microsoft took their sweet time developing IE7, there was considerable lag time between IE6 and IE7. In the mean time, someone who saw this trend went ahead and registered IE7.com. Go check it out…it’s a prime example of what could happen if you miss your brand :).
What we have been noticing lately is that one day we will search for the availability of a domain name, go back the next to register it and it is suddenly gone. One or two I can leave to coincidence, but after about five I started getting suspicious. We checked the WHOIS information, and sure enough they were registered to the same people. This leaves me to one conclusion – someone at the site we were searching was either selling the searches or sniping domains in the effort to up sell them.
This interesting article in the Washington Post outlines what we have been seeing as well. ICANN is looking in to it, but finding “proof” seems to be the problem. I think the whois records and timing that we were noticing are proof enough, but we’re not a large international organization now, are we?? 