If you've tried to register a domain name recently, you've probably been a bit concerned that all the good names are gone - although I've tried to point out on numerous occasions that there are still a lot of good names left if you think outside the box. 

But the big question is, where did all the names go?  Let's just take a random example. Let's have a look at 'hotclub.com'. Go ahead, visit the site if you want - but be warned they'll make it hard to get back here. The domain doesn't belong to a speculator, hoping they can sell the name for more money. It doesn't even really have anything to do with a business related to 'hot' and 'club'. It's just an 'advertising domain'. 

There are hundreds of companies out there, buying up (or just taking) any name that is recognizable. Then they park it with a search bar and make money off of the type-in traffic - selling advertising. If it's a common enough name, they're going to get thousands of random hits over the course of a year, and they'll make money off of anybody who responds to the targetted ads and clicks a link.

A few years ago, this kind of business couldn't survive, because you needed enough paid advertising to offset the $60/year domain name fees that once were charged. But deregulation of the domain name business changed all that. If you become an official registrar, the names are free to you. Not only that, but you have inside advantages to grabbing expiring domain names of interest. That's what these companies are doing. Becoming registrars and then taking every decent name that comes along. They build up portfolios of thousands or millions of websites, all serving up advertising for a few pennies a click. Over time it all adds up, because the cost to them is essentially nothing.

And there's nothing really wrong with this except that it removes millions of domain names from the pool. Any name that is pronounceable or based on simple word combinations. Unless somebody bought it ten years ago and held onto it, it's now parked and serving advertising for an offshore corporation. What did they leave for the rest of us? Mostly just junk. You can still find domains like 40ixqpokliw.com selling on ebay. You can still register new names that are outrageously long and hardtotypewithoutmakingamistaek.com.

Occasionally you might get lucky - but be careful what website you are using to search for your new domain name. You might find the name is available - only to come back moments later and find that it's gone. Coincidence? Hardly... The domain grabbers are looking for domains that people are likely to type. You think you have some fresh new names that people are likely to type. So not only do you have the names they want but you're typing them into their web server. Doesn't this look a bit like a conflict of interest? Duh!

A while back I came up with some possibly interesting names and shared them through one of my websites. Those I mentioned in an earlier article are all still available except one. Those I mentioned in a later article are all gone but one. The big difference is that in the earlier article I looked up the names myself using Linux utilities. In the later article I used a web lookup service provided by a registrar. On yet another occasion I was blocked from registering a really cool name. It was available, but registration was blocked. Five minutes later it was registered by somebody in the Cayman Islands. Coincidence? Hardly. The name had never been registered before and all of a sudden two people try to register it at the same time? Right. Be warned.   

What can be done about this? I don't really know but I'll offer a few thoughts. Domain registrars shouldn't be able to get free or almost free domains unless everybody else can also. They also should not get any advantage on expiring domains. In fact I would go so far as suggest that domain registrars should not be allowed to own any more than one domain name - the one they use for their own registration service. There also should be a radical expansion of the top-level domain (TLD) space since all these millions of good domains are gone forever and the whole deregulated registry system to allow public accessibility to the domain name system has been thwarted. That's the high-level overview - and I realize the devil is in the details. The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that one exists.