On Circle ID Frank Schilling of the registrar Domain Name Sales posts on the history of Domain Tasting/Testing.

Present day “Domain Tasting” has its roots in 2001 and 2002 when a small group of ambitious domain registrants persuaded two registrars [...] to allow them to register large blocks of domain names for the purpose of establishing which names garnered type-in traffic and then subsequently deleting those which didn’t. These registrants were motivated to locate generic, defensible domain names with resonance; names which were compelling and obvious that people would use to navigate the web and to then monetize the traffic those names generated through paid-search advertising. It is important to note that old traffic from a former web site (link popularity) or traffic from a company trademark is entirely different from organic type-in traffic which comes to “generic names” for the keyword weight or gravity of the name alone. Names such as spacepictures.com or pandabears.com contain generic intent type-in traffic which could be sold to the first generation paid-search monetization companies of the day [...].

[via Circle ID]