How to Find Domains Before they are Dropped?

A few weeks back I read an article by a guy that details his journey purchasing a high-PR site and he described the whole system of how domains eventually get dropped, and how someone that knows the system can get ahead of a lot of prospective buyers. As I recall there is something like 3 phases a domain goes through before it drops back onto the "public pool", and in one of those phases there is an auction.

I can't find the article, and now I'm ready to start looking at domains with the idea that I might by them while they still have their PR, age and backlinks. Also, I'm using the tool at "expireddomains(dot)net" and it's kind of clunky, so if anyone knows of a better tool to search for dropped domains I'd appreciate that also.

Also something that's really effective is using a domaingrabber and setting it up for lotsa lotsa domains that you're interested in. Eventually someone forgets to update or doesn't get the alert-emails, and when he does you'll be ready to snap the domain from him. I use these grabbers: Snapnames and Pool

You may want to read this articles that discuss the big 3 when it comes to getting a domain name before it's dropped:

http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2005/03/how-to-snatch-an-expiring-domain
http://www.asiteaboutnothing.net/c_catching-domains.html
http://adminspot.net/topic/808-how-to-snatch-an-expired-domain/

You may want to also read this article
http://imdeanmartin.com/dropped-domain-names-are-like-gold-or-are-they/

ryce889 said:

You may want to read this articles that discuss the big 3 when it comes to getting a domain name before it's dropped:

Click to expand...

THANKS! That first article, the "Mike Industries" article was the one I was asking about. I've made certain to bookmark it, and I'll be reading the others, also.

Okay I have another question.

I have an interest in a particular keyword, and I'm interested in buy a dropped domain that has this keyword included in the domain text, such as "roundwheels.com".

Is there some kind of tool that can search domains based off this keyword, and present the list in order of expiration date, soonest to latest?