ICANN* voted to cancel domain testing by including fees for all new added domains. This decision was taken with a vote of 13-0. Domain testing has been debated for several years. It was an issue of great scale that was finally sorted out.

Domain testing is a term for testing the profitability of a domain within a five-day grace period. During the Add Grace Period (AGP) the registrars can delete a domain at no cost. The cybersquatters skilfully used this option turning domain testing into business. In this grace time frame a registrant could register millions of temporary domains, place advertising links on them and thus generate millions of dollars income.

Another widespread abuse with AGP is the practice of “domain kiting”, which involves deleting a domain name during the five-day grace period and immediately registering it for another five-day period. In that case the cybersquatters avoid paying for the use of a domain name.

No doubt terminating these bad practices will boost the quality of websites, especially when it comes to sites only created to generate advertising income.

*ICANN stands for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a California non-profit corporation that was created in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks.

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