question Is GoDaddy Holding Pending Delete Domains Past Day 76 After Expiration?

[Ms Domainer]

I'm just wondering if this is a new policy.

I had been following a domain that expired on 4/29/2015 and was checking whois daily.

It did not drop on day 75 or 76.

Finally, it quietly dropped yesterday (August 1 -- 96 days after expiration), and I regged it.

Has anyone had a similar experience?

Any guesses as to why Go Daddy would hold onto an expired pending-delete domain for so long?

Perhaps @Joe Styler or other Go Daddy rep could answer this.

 

[TestCase]

I've experienced the same thing in the past two months - though it been considerably less than 96 days. I've seen it take anywhere from 76 days up to 83 days. My most recent pickup from a drop took 79 days (or maybe it was 80...)

No idea what is going on.

 

[Ms Domainer]

I had another domain that dropped at day 79, but I didn't think too much about that. I figured it was just a glitch.

BTW, these late drops were for domains that had been advertised by spammers, so maybe that had something to do with it.

 

[Joe Styler]

96 days seems odd to me if it was a .com. There are a lot of rules depending on the tld. Since no name was given I will assume it was a .com. On a .com the rules we follow are here: https://www.godaddy.com/help/can-i-renew-my-domain-name-after-it-expires-609
Once we tell Verisign it is dropping it's another 30 days on top of day 42 referenced in the article, and then after those 30 days it's pend delete status at the registry for another 5 days. There are however a lot of names that drop each day and there are variables between us and Verisign etc so there are opportunities for technical issues to occur. In the vast majority of cases the above timeline is followed for a .com domain. Many of the other tlds have a similar expiration cycle, cctlds are the ones that vary more widely in general.

As far as the spammers I am guessing they are advertising names they know expired and hope to catch in the drop if there is any buyer interest, in which case most would not own the domains they are trying to sell so their advertising it would have no impact on the length of time a domain takes to expire.

 

[Ms Domainer]

96 days seems odd to me if it was a .com. There are a lot of rules depending on the tld. Since no name was given I will assume it was a .com. On a .com the rules we follow are here: https://www.godaddy.com/help/can-i-renew-my-domain-name-after-it-expires-609
Once we tell Verisign it is dropping it's another 30 days on top of day 42 referenced in the article, and then after those 30 days it's pend delete status at the registry for another 5 days. There are however a lot of names that drop each day and there are variables between us and Verisign etc so there are opportunities for technical issues to occur. In the vast majority of cases the above timeline is followed for a .com domain. Many of the other tlds have a similar expiration cycle, cctlds are the ones that vary more widely in general.

As far as the spammers I am guessing they are advertising names they know expired and hope to catch in the drop if there is any buyer interest, in which case most would not own the domains they are trying to sell so their advertising it would have no impact on the length of time a domain takes to expire.

Joe, If you want to look it up, the name in question is Memoiri.com -- no longer a reason to keep it a secret, I suppose.

As I recall, it was "pendingDelete" and "on-hold" during the 70-96 days after expiration, but I'm not 100% sure of that (I didn't take screenshots and I don't have access to historical tools).

I really wanted it, so I was checking the whois on the domain daily, sometimes several times a day, so I'm fairly certain it dropped on day 96.

And, yes, several spammers had emailed me about this domain.

 

[Joe Styler]

I can only really say that normally domains follow the life cycle in the article I put above. There are exceptions, but those are rare. In most cases you will not be waiting 90+ days to get an expired domain.