SlickGeek Slicker than slick.

Anyone who ever run a website knows that searching for a good, available domain name to use is a time consuming process. This is compounded by the fact that the internet is now littered with countless, contentless sites. Their only purpose is simply to display ads and/or to resell it to someone else. While this act is still legal, it has crossed the line from virtual real estate investing into more of the form cybersquatting. To put it into perspective, let’s take an example.

You have an idea for a project (or a personal website) that you need a name for. It used to be that you think up a cool name first and then you can register a domain name for it (or a similar variation of it). However, it’s almost impossible nowaday to do that. Now, the process is reversed. First you have to secure a domain name before you can do anything else because, chances are, whatever you thought up is already taken. So, you took some time to search for the name. The one you wanted … nope, taken. Hmmm, how about this variation … nope … how about this one … no go. Through the process of trials and errors, you finally come to an available domain. Ok, it’s not what I wanted … but at least it’s available. Let’s try to see what else is still available. After some more time, you came back with a list of available names that you think is do-able. Since this is a name you will be using from now on, and the one you going to tell your friends about … you thought it’s a good idea to sleep on it … think it over alittle more … before picking one from the list. So, the next day (or serveral days later), you come back to register that domain. WTH (or WTF, if you preferred) … it’s been registered! It was still available yesterday, what happened? You quickly run a registrar check on the ’whois’ for that domain. It’s registered to some random registrar … and the date registered was …WTH (again) … yesterday??? Going to the site itself, you found out that it just has a bunch of ads, and on top of it is the line … This domain is for sale.

So, what happened? You got jacked, kid. Unfortunately, this is a very common occurence nowaday. What happened is that “someone” saw that you have an interested in that name, and decided that it has value so he/she/they bought it. It’s that simple. So, who is this mysterious “person”? Well, depends one how (and where) you do your research online, it could be any number of following possibilities.

It could be the registrars. Some registrars are set up by domainers themselves to get the first dips at registering domains. It’s quicker, cheaper than normal people do it through the normal channels. Best of all, you can register tons of domains at once without much effort. To reduce the chances of stolen names, you should only use big companies to do your searches, like Network Solutions for example. However, this still won’t guaranteed that the names you want won’t be taken right under your nose. Why? Because domainers pay big bucks to get registrars’ search logs, and there is no law that prevent registrars from doing so.

It could be the sites where you do the whois on. Same as the above. Some of these services are set up by domainers themselves. Some might have fancy ajax options that are meant to entice common web users, and the majority of the time, it works.

It could be your friends/coworker. This might sound silly, but it happens more often then you think. You thought of a cool name, asking around for people’s opinions, and before you know it … one of them decided that they like it more than they like you … and BAM … it is registered before you know it.

Of course the above are just few of the many possibilities. Domainers are getting more clever everyday, and with the advances in technologies, they can work faster and with less efforts. Until they are punished the same way that spammers do (when they are caught), there nothing we, as the normal netizen, can do about it.