One of my clients e-mailed me earlier this week about registering a domain name. I checked on the domain and it was available, so I e-mailed the client back. Today, my client finally sent me the approval to register the domain, but when I checked today, it had been registered by a domain name reseller. The domain name is too obscure for this to be a coincidence, so I want to know:

1. Do domain registrars release search information to domain resellers?

1B. If so, are there any registrars that don't do this?

2. Is it possible for domain resellers to track requests made by a certain company? How do they do this?

3. Is this legal? I know the answer is probably yes, but that's not what I want to hear.

Any answers to the above, or recommendations on the best way to relieve stress in this situation would be much appreciated. Thanks."

I am very interested in what people have to say to this. I checked the domain http://myspacemagic.com for my website many times before I decided to buy it. When I was ready to but I entered it and it said it was taken.

That is why you register anything and everything you think is good.

And john of course somebody is gonna register that, it has myspace in it

Yes, for example such as myspacemagic of course it is bound to be registered sooner or later, but on the more obscure names it seems to be more than just coincidence, I have had this happen to me a few times, with domains I check a few times before I finally get around to registering it, and mysteriously they are already registered, not by normal users but by bulk domain resellers, which I have to say, I don't like.

isn't this already a thread on WMW?

yes, this topic is discussed on other forums. and i think there are reasons for that.

i was in the same situation with GoDaddy. next day when i made up my mind to register that domain name that was not too great i could not believe my eyes and checked it several times when i received a notice that the domain was already registered - a day ago.

I have had this problem too many times (fool me once, shame on me..) with namecheap. They/some employee or what not, must be monitoring the searches.

If it happens, just check back in a week or two, if you are lucky the domain is then available.

Why don't we test this theory out by picking an unregistered domain and doing searches for it on many different domain registration sites and see which one grabs it first.

I emailed namecheap about this kinda thing, and they replied that they don't sell searches to domain name resellers. :s

what did you expect them to answer?

I always felt they sold search queries to resellers, which is why when I think of a domain, I try to buy it right away.

This world is all about money. Most sites that offer "domain availability check" own the search results, which means they can do whatever they want with their sites and the search results. Strictly speaking, this is fair - we buy their services (i.e. search results) by feeding them our domain naming ideas.
So the question is not "if", the question is "when". I think that you should test domain availability only at the most trusted sites. I personally found one large domain reseller that allows for about 2 weeks before snatching "tasty" domains. As a rule of thumb, I never search for a domain if I'm not ready to buy now.