Domain Kiting

Domain Kiting is a practice that involves registering a domain name and placing ads or another type of money generating mechanism on the webpage, dropping the name before the ICANN 5-day add grace period (AGP) expires, and then continuing to register the name again in order to make money without incurring the additional cost of registration fees. Domain kiting draws its name from check kiting, a form of check fraud. This practice is related to Domain Tasting in that both practices take advantage of ICANN's AGP and can involve a large number of domain names.

Public Perception
Domain kiting is frowned upon in the domain industry for its abuse of ICANN's add grace period at the expense of other Internet users.

Outcome
The outcome of domain kiting is that it creates feelings of inequality as the kiter is able to profit without registering and paying for the domain name. However, ICANN policy changes have largely diminished the prevalence of domain kiting.

Historical Use
Historically, domain kiting has been used to generate revenue from a domain name without having to pay registration fees. Domain kiting and domain tasting became major topics of discussion in the Internet community and with ICANN after the rate of deletions during the AGP began to rise dramatically. In April 2006, out of 35 million names registered, 32.7 million were being used for domain kiting, according to a post by GoDaddy.com founder Bob Parsons. In many cases, individuals practicing domain kiting would use advertising, such as Google AdSense or other pay-per-click ads to make money. Google, in an effort to prevent the use of AdSense in domain kiting, changed its policy so that a domain must "be open for six days before being considered for acceptance into AdSense for Domains."

ICANN Policy

 * AGP: a policy that allows registrars to receive registry operator credit for names that are registered and then deleted within a five day period.
 * AGP Limits Policy: While this policy was aimed primarily at addressing domain tasting, it may also guard against domain kiting by charging a fee when a disproportionate number of domain names are dropped per month and thereby making it less economically feasible to participate in domain kiting. See AGP Limits Policy and Domain Tasting for more information.

Legislation
Domain kiting is not addressed by U.S. law.

DNS Award
Awardees do not participate in or condone practices that abuse the AGP, such as domain kiting.

Additional Resources

 * Read the AGP Limits Policy

Related Articles

 * Domain Tasting
 * AGP
 * AGP Limits Policy