An obscure dot com I just checked got registered

Coincidence or Fishy?

[jaski]

I was just looking at a new product for developing a website for marketing it. Its a niche category and not very competitive. I came up with a domain name and just checked it on a whois service and found that it has been registered exactly today for one year .. I am surprised .. can that be a mere coincidence?

There is no registrant info either .. only the registrar name shows up in the registry whois.

When I checked on godaddy they don't even have the whois information .. which probably means it was registered only a few minutes ago?

[benevolent001]

The issue has been discussed earlier too ( check out some threads here only) , some of webmasters suspect that domain registrars are monitoring our search for domain bookings and sometimes they book domains before we actually do.

[Woz]

Was it registered today but BEFORE you first checked? If so, co-incidence.

OR

Was it registered today AFTER you first checked? If so, then possibly fishy, maybe.

Onya
Woz

[Rehan]

Which whois service did you use to check the domain before it was registered?

[Mr Bo Jangles]

Following disclosure of this alleged practise, when thinking about new domain names for a project, I now don't check each one on any 'whois' service first. Firstly, I put each potential name in the browser to see if it 'resolves' at all, then I work up my list of 'potentials', and rank them, on the assumption that they all might be available. When I'm ready, I hit 'GoDaddy' with my credit card ready to register - if it's available - I pounce!

[jmccormac]

Following disclosure of this alleged practise, when thinking about new domain names for a project, I now don't check each one on any 'whois' service first. Firstly, I put each potential name in the browser to see if it 'resolves' at all,

This is also potentially dangerous as the NXDOMAIN (domain not found) traffic from an ISP's nameservers would be valuable to domaintasters and similar. You would be better off trying anything like this with the root nameservers for the TLDs you are searching.

Regards...jmcc

[jaski]

Was it registered today but BEFORE you first checked? If so, co-incidence.

Yes it came up as registered when I checked it for the very first time itself.

But it not only came up as taken it had no registrant info. I don't know if that matters but I thought all domains have a registrant.

[raedthakur]

maybe some privacy settings ...registars offer these days

[londrum]

i think its just a coincedence. if you think how many people there are in the world making websites, it is unlikely that you are the only person thinking along those lines. if it has occurred to you, then chances are it has occurred to someone else as well.

and i don't see how they can make money out of buying up all these names anyway. 99% of the people will just forget about it if they see the name has gone. (like you did, when your one went.) so if these companies buy up every name that gets checked then the vast majority of their expenditure will just disappear down the drain.

[radix]

My practice to figure out whether a domain name has been registered or not is to use a whois service showing results with different tld-s for the searched domain. This way when I want to register widget.net I'd search for widget.com and the results would show if it's available in its .com .net .org .info .biz versions.

[unperturbed]

Let me get this straight, the domain was taken even before you checked it?

If so

can that be a mere coincidence?

I don't think so, it's those time-travelling mind-reading domain grabbers we've all come to fear.

[cybergirl]

Interesting topic, been a long time suspicion for many people. Its a typical conspiracy theory, although if in the registrars shoes some people may try such tactics I think it just wouldnt be financially feasable to work this way for a registrar.But having said that.. domain trading is domain trading and people do make money gambling dont they! and to add to the mix I have seen one place have a domain available to buy and another say its taken...haha the plot thickens.