I’d never actually heard of the term domain tasting until recently; a Slashdot article was forwarded to me about domains disappearing after individuals had done some searching for them. There’s a bit of a dispute between those who practice the art of domain tasting and those that are against it, with questions surrounding the legitimacy of domain tasting as a business. For the average user, myself included, if I do a search for a domain I would expect that search to remain (for the most part) confidential; that information shouldn’t be available to be exploited, at least in my opinion.

Ultimately, this is a part of the dark side of the Internet. Technically, I’m sure that no one is doing anything illegal. Instead they are simply exploiting the unsuspecting. By sticking with larger, reputable sites for your searches, you can probably help lower the chances that your domain search information will be exploited, but it’s definitely not a complete solution. While looking into the topic, I found an article that gives some useful advice for those searching and how to help protect their potential domains:

Delay searching for available domains until you’re actually prepared to follow through with the registration. Better still, search for and register new domain ideas immediately whenever inspiration strikes you.

If one of your domain searches is registered by a domain taster shortly after you checked availability of the domain, and you still want the domain, wait five days and it might become available again. Do not visit the domain during these five days, otherwise the domain taster will believe that the domain gets enough traffic to warrant adding it to his permanent portfolio!

If you’re thinking of several domains for a project and are undecided which one to use, register all of your domain ideas immediately. If you use a registrar like Moniker or Dynadot, you’ll have 4-5 days to decide if you actually want to keep a domain once you have registered it. This practically eliminates the danger of impulse registrations that you might regret later.

Taken from the following article: http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitoring-searches.html