[alexjawad]

It took me a couple of weeks before mine disappeared, and during that time I had run searches to double check the availability. The domain name was totally random so it feels extremely far-fetched that someone happened to register it just before I was about to purchase it.

[GoodIntentions]

I wonder if checking multiple times in two weeks flagged your name as "popular but unregistered", prompting its' registration? I doubt any registrar would grab every single name, but ones that suddenly got search hits probably get snapped up.

Like the article suggests, I always search at the terminal. If the name is available it gets registered then. I look at it as 8 bucks buying me a one year option on the name.

[alexjawad]

Yeah, you may have a point there. I for sure won't repeat that mistake again. Having my .com domains snapped away from under my nose is definitely the most annoying part of branding.