The Nominet .uk registry is clamping down on registrars suspected of abusing its automated registration service by " domain tasting".

Domain tasting involves the registering of a domain name to see whether it will generate much traffic and revenue, often by posting pay-per-click adverts. If a domain it not popular enough the holder then deletes it before the registry requests payment.

Domain tasting greatly affects .com at the moment, with tens of millions of names registered for this purpose, or being constantly registered and deleted to avoid registration fees, according to Nominet's director of operations, Eleanor Bradley. The practice breaches Nominet's acceptable use policy and threatens to put a strain on its systems, and render them unavailable to others, she added.

"We were conscious that if it is hitting .com now it will reach us and .uk in six to 12 months time," Bradley said. "Putting a limit on the number of deletion requests is the quickest and easiest way of dealing [with the problem] as it doesn't prevent genuine deletions."

In other news, internet research firm Ipwalk has raised concerns that there may be many more speculatively registered .eu domains, despite registry Eurid recently suspending 74,000 and suing 400 registrars for alleged breach of contract.

According to new research by the firm, countries including Malta, Luxembourg and Gibraltar have an unusually high number of .eu registrations relative to their population size and compared to the number of country code domains. Malta is top with over five times as many .eu domains as Germany and seven times the number in the UK.

But Andy McLaughlin of web hosting firm and registrar Fasthosts Internet argued that there is likely to be a more "reasonably innocent explanation" for the stats, as many of these countries are regarded as tax havens.

"The above destinations are often the home of many gaming firms as well as other companies who may be able to reap the financial benefits of selling their product from these countries," he explained. "So companies either existent or planned may find countries such as Malta the ideal for their business model and have registered their domain names already."