What is Domain Tasting?

In the past it was free to return a domain within a five day period, the grace period of five days was developed to allow domainers to return names that had errors; an example of a genuine error is a spelling mistake. On the 1^st of July 2008, ICANN decided they would introduce a fee of US$0.20 per domain that was deleted within the five day grace period. As of the 1^st of April 2009, new rules were implemented and Verisign began charging a full fee if you deleted more than 10% of your registrations in that month.  This leaves the ability to delete 10% of the total new domain registrations for a fee of around $0.20- this fee depends on which ICANN agreement you are on.

Domain Tasting still exists, regardless of the registration fee; due to price increases and the inability to receive refunds domainers are far more selective now than in the past.

Domain Tasting allows domainers to find domains that they can monetize, develop or sell. Domain Tasting also benefits companies, such as registrars, registries and ICANN, as they make a higher profit thru registrations. Google and Yahoo and other domain parking feed providers make larger profits too as they have more inventories to sell and advertisers have new inventory in which they can advertise on. When users go to the incorrect site, they will not see 'this website does not exist' errors, instead they are often provided with useful links to the sites that they expected to view, helping people find what they are looking for.

Domain Kiting is the procedure of deleting a domain name during the five day grace period then immediately re-registering it for another five day grace period. Every time a domainer drops a domain, they risk losing it. The intention of this was to be able to have a domain registered without actually paying a registration fee. Domain Kiting has become non-existent due to the introduction of the ICANN fee.