Expired domains getting registered by someone when I find them

I have spent a lot of time these last months crawling and analyzing expired domains, and I've found some really good ones. The really great domains are from country specific TLDs and the registration is both a bit more tedious and more expensive. So it takes a bit more time to set it up (for example finding someone to register it with their details when WHOIS privacy is not available for that specific TLD).

But here's the thing. Every time I found an unusually good domain like this and start researching how to register it, someone else comes first and takes it. The latest example was today, when I was researching how to register a great domain that I found with domain privacy, verifying links etc. I checked to see earlier today that it was still available, yes it was. It had been expired for almost a year now. Then when I'm ready, it has been registered, 1 hour before me according to a whois lookup. If this was just a one time thing I would have though "ok, that's unlucky". But it goes for EVERY great domain that I find. Has happened with 4 of them in the last month, where three of them were PR6 with awesome link profiles. Of course these link profiles might invite easy access for crawlers to find the pages, but if they were that easy to find, then why have no one registered it for such a long time?

Now I'm thinking, this can't be a coincidence, right? What are the odds that domains that have remained untouched for such a long time gets taken just moments before I try to register? I've thought of some alternatives to the cause of this:

1. Just bad luck
2. Trojan/Virus on computer
3. Site used for domain research publishing/using my query
- Wayback Machine (don't think so)
- Majestic (don't think so)
- PR Checker Tool
- Domain registrar (well known company)
- OSE (don't think so)
- Openlinkprofiler (don't think so)
- Sales representative at domain registrar (only used in 2 cases)

Or am I wrong to question this? What do you think?

sometimes you just have to take a chance and not do too much research
By now you should have a good idea what domains are good or bad
So grab them fast.

I have always worried about this as well, as it has happened to me a few times. I always put it down to the tools I was using were not confidential so the owner could see what I ran through their tool. I'm talking about "Check PR/Majestic/MOZ stats for free here!" type websites. I don't believe using Majestic/Moz directly is a risk.

It could also be when you look up the whois for a domain, the whois data gets updated. People could keep an eye on most recent updated domains somehow and check the metrics out for themselves and take them.

This is one of the reasons I developed my own tool for finding/checking/tracking expired domains. Its much better than any commercially available domain tool out there and can do whatever I want. It did cost a pretty penny though along with my own subscription to Majestic etc.

I suggest you find someway to streamline your decision making process and don't use any shady tools.

Mister Don said:

I have always worried about this as well, as it has happened to me a few times. I always put it down to the tools I was using were not confidential so the owner could see what I ran through their tool. I'm talking about "Check PR/Majestic/MOZ stats for free here!" type websites. I don't believe using Majestic/Moz directly is a risk.

Click to expand...

This. You MUST be using some tool for your research that sends all the logs to the owner - imagine that guy registering 50 fat domains a day like that Check your tools.

Keep in mind registrars often do that too when your trigger something checking a domain. I've have that happen with godaddy years ago.