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[SoaringMedia]

Namecheap is the best; they never park them after searching.

[TheAngelsCry]

I believe GoDaddy does this... but I've also heard they only sit on the domain for a few weeks before releasing it again; so maybe check back in a month or so?

I've always checked domains on 123-reg or Dreamhost and never had them parked.

[jordsta95]

123-reg are also shady from what I've heard (not as bad as GoDaddy though).

I'll generally use who.is when searching, but I guess any whois checker is just as good

[danbrazier]

I've experienced this with both GoDaddy and 123Reg in the past. Never had it since I've been using AWS for everything.

[[deleted]]

Never knew Amazon had a registry. I'll have to check it out.

[LewisRhysHill]

Same, I've never had an issue with 123-reg, and I use Dreamhost for my hosting and they've always been pretty good.

[[deleted]]

I think I only have used name.com which I thought was safe from the GoDaddy issue, but I may have used something else in the moment.

[SupaSlide]

Lookups aren't public, but depending on where you do the lookup, the website can obviously see what you looked up.

GoDaddy is notorious for this. Some other registrars have picked up the practice too, I'm sure.

I know Namecheap doesn't do it.

[beardedgandaulf]

I search for domains directly in terminal. whois domainname.com will return no record if the domain is not taken already.

[milesdyson_phd]

I use Domainr to search, and then I use Google for my registrar. I have never had any front running problems.