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Why you should never use GoDaddy ever again (even for a domain search)
- cuero 14y agodomai.nr is an excellent domain search alternative.
- asparagui 14y agoYUP. And then, if you hit the domain at all in the next year, they will renew it and add it to their domain auction program, whereby you can bid (* (amount they've spent) 2) to win! Not that I've, uh, had this happen, of course...
- theli0nheart 14y agoWhat are you implying? If GoDaddy purchased every domain searched through their site, they'd go bankrupt. It's not a very sustainable business model. Isn't the more likely explanation that someone else also thought of your excellent name and purchased it?
- gfosco 14y agoNot every domain... but yes, that's what he's implying, and this is not the first time the claim has been made. I've had it happen personally, and so have others I know.
- joahua 14y agoI don't think the author's suggesting GoDaddy purchase every domain, but it'd be reasonable to think they might determine the relative value of domains to purchase based on search volumes. Dubiously ethical, but technically straightforward and a simple enough numbers game on the business side.
- mistercow 14y agoNope. There's a five-day grace period on domain registrations. They snatch the domain to encourage you to buy it from them, and if you don't, they delete the registration and get their money refunded. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting
- zcvosdfdgj 14y agoHe doesn't claim that it happening here. He said: I searched for a domain, and 3 days later someone else registered it. He has no complaint here. He has no right to domains he simply searched for but refused to buy.
- mistercow 14y ago>He said: I searched for a domain, and 3 days later someone else registered it. No, he said he searched for a domain, and when he went to register it 3 days later, it was already taken. That is consistent with the hypothesis that GoDaddy is tasting, since 3 days would be within the 5 day grace period.
- zcvosdfdgj 14y agoHe said it was registered through godaddy. Not that godaddy owns it. Honestly, if he really believes godaddy is tasting, there's a simple way to end the debate. Post the name of the domain so we can all see the whois. Of course he won't do that, because his entire post is BS
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- reitzensteinm 14y agoAs another commenter has pointed out, there's a grace period where they can purchase the domain and cancel it without paying anything. So it is sustainable, plausible, dirty, and very much in line with Godaddy's track record.
- nivla 14y agoI agree. Although not a big fan of GoDaddy, I have both searched and purchased tons of domains with them and atleast to my knowledge, they don't put a hold on the searched domains. You can do a simple experiment: search for the domain "acmenewdomain.com" in Godaddy, wait for a few mins/hours and see if it is available at say Gandi.net. However, I can't say the same about Network Solutions. For the paranoid, just do a whois lookup yourself. If you have a linux machine edit your .profile and add "alias whoise=/root/whoise" to it. Then create a file /root/whoise and insert the following line into it whois $1 | grep -i exp.*: Now whenever you want to check for a domain's availability, just execute "whoise domain.com". If you receive a blank response, it is available otherwise it returns the current expiration for the domain.
- gojomo 14y agoA 'whois' lookup won't help the deeply paranoid: • what about the operator of the whois service you contact? My impression from some quick Googling is that whois.networksolutions.com is the default in Ubuntu. If you fear NetworkSolution's web interface, why would you trust their whois interface? • AFAIK, the 'whois' protocol isn't encrypted. An enterprising domainer could be sniffing for promising lookups.
- mistercow 14y agoNetwork Solutions and (I think) Register.com used to do this (probably still do), and claimed it was a "service" to prevent your domain from being snatched up by someone else before you got a chance to buy it. Of course, the fact that it meant you'd have to buy it from them was obviously just an unfortunate coincidence that they would avoid if they possibly could. I'm sure. If I recall correctly, what they are actually doing is taking advantage of the grace period that is built in to domain name registration. They buy the domain, and will resell it to you if you want it within those 5 days, but if you don't want it, they will release it (at which point their own fees are refunded). So all you have to do if this happens to you is wait 5 days, and then you can buy it from whoever you like. But yeah, it's a shitty practice, and you definitely should do your business through a registrar that doesn't do it.
- vladd 14y agoThis is old news, ICANN ended "domain tasting" via the 5-day grace period in 2009 by charging additional fees for those that engage in the practice: http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-12aug09-en.htm http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-12au... There are 104,419,043 .com domains out there [1] and GoDaddy claims to have registered over 53 million domains (non-.com extensions included) - what are the chances of a new domain being registered with GoDaddy? If GoDaddy were to do domain tasting they would go bankrupt pretty soon. [1] http://www.dailychanges.com/ http://www.dailychanges.com/
- InclinedPlane 14y agoDomain tasting used to be easy money for spammers. Simply "taste" a huge number of domains, such as misspellings of popular sites, and put typically ad-filled domain parked pages on them. Figure out which ones make money and which don't, register the ones that are profitable, let the others lapse, and move on.
- wdr1 14y agoOr simply let them expire & then start another 5 day period... over & over & over again. Sadly, this did happen.
- eekfuh 14y agoJust because its "Registered Through" doesnt mean that Godaddy owns the domain. Someone could easily just purchased it during that time and could be using Godaddy (they are the worlds largest registrar). My dad's domain is registered through Godaddy. It says the same thing "You can view the WHOIS listing or use Domain Buy Service to get this name" when you search for it on their website. Also he is using their privacy service and the whois says this: Registered through: GoDaddy.com, LLC (http://www.godaddy.com http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: XMYDADSDOMAINX.COM Created on: 01-Oct-03 Expires on: 01-Oct-13 Last Updated on: 02-Aug-11 Administrative Contact: Private, Registration XMYDADSDOMAINX.COM@domainsbyproxy.com Domains By Proxy, LLC DomainsByProxy.com 14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States (480) 624-2599 Fax -- (480) 624-2598
- culturestate 14y agoNetsol got busted doing this in 2008[1]; they stopped after receiving a great deal of backlash. It stands to reason GoDaddy would also stop once discovered, but then they've never been a company to back down from controversy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions#Controversy_over_domain_name_front_running http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Solutions#Controversy_o...
- zcvosdfdgj 14y agoHe is not claiming that godaddy is doing what netsol did. He's saying, I checked on a domain, and 3 days later someone else registered it through Godaddy. He doesn't have a claim to every name he searches for. If he liked it, he should have bought it.
- unreal37 14y agoThat wikipedia link states that they stopped registering domains that were searched using WhoIs but continued doing it when searching from their home page. So they didn't stop.
- biot 14y agoSo what happens if you search for a domain name on domai.nr and, three days later, you find it has been registered through domai.nr and is available on NameLayer which is domai.nr's premium domain selling service? Would you chalk it up to coincidence, especially if it's a decent name? Or will you write another blog post telling people to never use domai.nr ever again? GoDaddy was one of the first ones to call attention to domain tasting, later referring to it as domain kiting: http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/pdf/100804_letter_iyd.pdf http://www.godaddy.com/gdshop/pdf/100804_letter_iyd.pdf http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitoring-searches.html http://www.dailydomainer.com/200775-domain-tasting-monitorin... If I, as an anonymous user, search for any of my domains on GoDaddy, I find that they'll offer to let me use their domain buy service to backorder them too, even for domains I've had since the 90's. Without any further evidence, it's impossible to tell whether you actually have a legitimate case (though a sample size of one is hardly statistically significant) or if you simply don't understand how domain registrations work.
- zensavona 14y agoI'd say that it would be quite the coincidence if this obscure and very specific domain was registered within 24hrs by GoDaddy, completely by chance.
- treitnauer 14y agoIt's most of the time coincidence. Especially with GoDaddy being the largest registrar. Millions of customers and two people had the same idea.
- biot 14y agoYour blog post says that it was registered through GoDaddy. That's not surprising as (last I checked) they are the largest registrar and of the millions of domain names registered a month, it's altogether likely that your domain name was one of the several hundred thousand that were registered through GoDaddy in that three day period. However, you now claim it was registered by GoDaddy, not through GoDaddy? Your lack of precision in your terminology and the fact that you don't reveal the domain name for anyone to verify isn't helping your case.
- drivebyacct2 14y agoPeople don't do backups when warned. People don't change passwords or use password managers when warned. Interestingly enough, people don't stop using GoDaddy when warned.
- chris_wot 14y agoTime to start inputting every domain ever into the system.
- user49598 14y agono one uses the whois unix command?
- Auguste 14y agoNot everyone is on Unix. Whois doesn't ship with Windows, but it can still be downloaded at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897435.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897435.asp....
- annon 14y agoI'd say more than 75% of the registrars do this.
- mthoms 14y agoI am working an a domain search service that solves this problem. We make it impossible for our servers to know your domain searches. We also clearly explain how, so you can verify yourself. Contact me for beta access.
- ignaciogiri 14y agoI had the same problem 2 years ago - http://cl.ly/ITnW http://cl.ly/ITnW
- zcvosdfdgj 14y agoHe checked on a domain name, it wasn't registered. He waited 3 days, and someone else registered it through Godaddy (most popular registrar.. so he's not the only person who uses it). Godaddy offered to help make an offer to the person who purchased it. He doesn't say Godaddy OWNS it.. someone else registered the domain through Godaddy. BFD. What is the complaint? I'm not a fan of Godaddy (I'm moving all my domains to name.com).. but he doesn't have a complaint here. If you liked the domain you should have bought it.
- zensavona 14y agoI understand that i should have bought it at the time (see the preface to my post - "Although this is untimately my fault") I have trouble believing that the domain was purchased by another individual because of it's obscurity, and that is the reason I'm kinda annoyed I can't have it.
- zcvosdfdgj 14y agoThis has happened to me before. Millions of names being registered, and sometimes more than one person has the same idea. Which is why now days if I find a domain that I think I might use, but am not entirely sure about it, I waste the $8. Chalk it up to lesson learned.
- joelrunyon 14y agoDo you know if this is standard practice or just GD? Also, will this kick in if you search using something like http://bustaname.com http://bustaname.com (I'm assuming they query the whoIS database directly, but I'm not sure)
- irunbackwards 14y agoSeveral registrars practice this, sadly.
- digvan 14y agoThey once screwed me for a domain in their auction. They hold my money for 45 days to refund after my credit card company sued them. They customer service is also horrible. Never ever I will use their services.
- greghinch 14y agoIf you liked it you shoulda put a ring on it (aka domains are cheap, buy them and worry about the idea later)
- dkoch 14y agoGoDaddy explicitly states they do not practice domain name front running: http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-with-your-domain-searches/ http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-wi...
- franzus 14y agoOld news. I'm pretty paranoid when checking for domains that might be free. I never use my registrars search (only if I'm about to buy in the next 10 seconds). I have been burnt a few times by godaddy in the good ol' days :)
- redact207 14y ago1) The domain is cheap, should have registered it the first time round. 2) If GoDaddy is domain tasting, then they'd return it in 2 more days and you should be able to register it normally? 3) You shouldn't use GoDaddy because Bob Parsons is an elephant killing douche, not because they do domain tasting.
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y agoI bet the CEOs of other domain registers are cow killing douches.
- nl 14y agoThis is known as Domain Name Front Running. GoDaddy have said they don't do it: ICANN has neither accused nor investigated Go Daddy for front running. (Another registrar, Network Solutions, has come under fire for domain name front running.) The simple truth is Go Daddy deplores this type of activity and has implemented safeguards to ensure Go Daddy customers remain protected. I wouldn't usually defend GoDaddy, but while it is possible that they did front-run, I suspect a coincidence, or that the blog author did a search somewhere else too. [1] http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-with-your-domain-searches/ http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-wi...
- kunle 14y agoIf this is true, someone should build a bot that randomly creates garbage domains and searches for them through godaddy repeatedly (so they buy millions and millions of garbage domains).
- shellox 14y agoINWX is a great domain provider, you may should try them. The second one I use is gandi.net and they are good as well. http://www.inwx.de/en http://www.inwx.de/en https://www.gandi.net/ https://www.gandi.net/
- ck2 14y agoYou never should query a REGISTRAR, always directly query the REGISTRY for domain availability and whois info. Any coder worth their salt should be easily able to make a query program as a weekend project. All the registry whois addresses are readily available.
- mkaxlevin 14y agoGODADDY sniffed a domain that I was tracking and grabbed it on the day it expired. It is now being offered through BLUERAZOR.COM. ( a proxy company used by Godaddy to hide frontrunning activity) GRABBING DOMAINS IS A VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW IS GODADDY USING FAKE REGISTRANT INFORMATION TO REGISTER THESE DOMAINS? USING A FAKE NAME TO REGISTER A DOMAIN IS IN VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW CAN GODADDY THEY PROVIDE PROPER REGISTRANT INFORMATION FOR THE COUNTLESS DOMAINS THAT THEY HAVE STOLEN?