Registrars now blocking registration of dropped domains

i noticed they always come back as 'unavailable' now. not sure for how long but not 48 hours as i regged some that expired yesterday later in the day. either way, if this means i can't register newly expired domains then they are going to lose a bunch of business.

Where was this "said"? thanks.

mrjohn said:

GoDaddy says they're now place a 48-hour hold on new registrations of domains that expired. I didn't call NameCheap, but based on how their site is treating dropped domains, they're also doing the same thing. Anyone else running into this issue?

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Idk but GD is known to discriminate people by the country they reside. We have seen different coupon codes. Any chance that this rule is for outside US and Canada? All other registrars showing the domain available but not GD!

Noticed the same thing trying to reg a drop tonight will keep trying and report back later, I honestly don't see the point in this move it makes no sense as they're only hurting themselves, something smells fishy here, 48 hours or not.

EDIT: it's now showing as available, so I'm guessing a 1 hour restriction? First time this has happened to me.

"Where was this "said"? thanks."

I have an account executive assigned to my account due to the volume of business that I do. She said they were having a meeting about it right now and were trying to figuring out if they were going to fix it or not.

I suspect the 48 hour figure that she quoted was a case of providing the most pessimistic scenario.

You are correct that the time frame appears to be shorter than she quoted. I just checked, and the domains I was trying to reg do appear to be mostly available now.

Still, as Electric-Shadow said, there's a strong smell of old fish to this whole business.

I get it from the standpoint of trying to nudge people into using dropcatch services, but the market isn't going to bear a real price for most of these domains. If people weren't dropping $69 on them at auction, they're not going to drop much on them at registration time, either.

Some of these domains I buy, if it weren't for the coupon codes, I wouldn't even pay reg price for them.

I am US-based, BTW, and as i said, I have an assigned account executive. At my peak volume a few years ago, I was easily in the top 1% of worldwide domain purchasers.

Well said! Virtually all premium domain names are snapped up before they get anywhere near dropping via the auction process or will be backordered.

Then the semi-premiums with medium end-user potential will be caught by auctions & closeouts if there are enough eyes on them which leaves the sifting through the dregs come drop time to find the gold that's been missed or left because others didn't see it worthwhile forking out a $69 backorder.

Which means that the registrars won't make anymore money if this is their stragey to drive people to their backordering because domainers would wait 2 days rather than shell out $69 or more and risk drawing in competition to catch the name.

One question though, is it happening just with .com drops?

Am I missing something here? A couple of hours ago, I just handregged 1 domain in a few seconds it became available (pendingdelete->free status change), does not worth anything above regfee so we did not pre-order it anywhere. Normal no-godaddy registration. Is the issue discussed specific to godaddy?

Can't say. I rarely buy anything except the .com domains due to the relative lack of working codes for the other common extensions.

Yeah, the whole thing is dumb. I have two servers churning 24-7 through Moz data and cross-referencing the domains against preferred dictionary words. I'm pretty mining the thinnest veins that run as far into the dirt as can be reach.

The only financial incentive I have to go near those domains is that they're available upon expiration to be purchased cheap. Most of the ones that do sell are going to sell for between $5 and $60, thus eliminating the value of ever buying any of them for a dropcatching system's price. And the truth is, I have to recover enough value on the ones that do sell to cover the cost of registering the ones that don't sell, so even a cheap dropcatch at something in the $10 to $15 range isn't worth it.

Also, it's worth noting that GoDaddy's dropcatcher sucks. I sometimes use it to pursue marginal domains, and occasionally I've managed to beat it to domains by doing a hand reg through GD's own site!

"Is the issue discussed specific to godaddy?"

I haven't checked around too many registrars because I was talking on the phone with GD. The only one I can attest for sure that also seems to be doing it is NameCheap.

I'd guess this doesn't last very long. Even as dumb as GoDaddy can be, they can't afford to piss off customers who have account executives assigned to them, especially over the peanuts that are expired domains.

The first day or two, it was only GD. Now, as has been noted by others, NameCheap has been showing dropped names as not available. As recently as yesterday, I was able to use Name.com to get accurate availability info during the drop-hour. Today, I was not at my computer during the drop-hour. By the time I was, 4:30 east coast US time (an hour-and-a-half after the end of the drop) the day's dropped .coms were able to be regged in GoDaddy. It seems there has been roughly a 1-2 hour lag.

I will have to seriously consider using an additional registrar if GD continues this, especially if they implement a 48 hour block! It's pretty questionable to sell your customers something called "Discount Domain Club" and then BLOCK them from registering available domains!? Quite frankly, it's questionable to be a registrar and block your customers from registering available domains - period.

I wonder if their motive is to block people from bombarding their servers with repeated bulk searches.

I miss good old times of DotRegistrar not yet acquired by MyDomain (and MyDomain not yet acquired by EIG) and their 1-click bulk registration form. Just one click - and all available domains from submitted list are registered. Was maybe in 2002/2003 if the memory serves me correctly

tonyk2000 said:

Just one click - and all available domains from submitted list are registered.

Click to expand...

Sounds dangerous!

This is not for a long time I think

If GoDaddy are blocking the registration of deleted domains, they are fools. Just go and register the domain at a registrar that doesn't block the registration of deleted domains. I've never heard anything so dumb as this.

When you factor in the discount codes, it's pretty hard to find anyone offering registration as cheap as GoDaddy.

I do think it's a knucklehead move on their part, largely because expired domain buyers are already buying domains in the part of the graph where diminishing returns are happening. What GD or any other registrar supposes to gain from this is beyond me. These are already domains where the market price is soft.

FTR, there's clear evidence that the dropcatching services are still successfully acquiring domains as soon as they drop. But even there, I don't see the logic. The major dropcatching services were already regularly beating people to the punch.

I assume, like everything in this world these days, this is just a larger set of predators in the food chain trying to extract a tiny bit more value out of the customer.

Oh. That's strange. The opposite of domainers who won't register a domain without a coupon code

I think GD wants to nose dive their's stock price to $10 by this move then shell bidding/internal buying to 50+

GoDaddy will be losing out on lots of registrations if this is the case. Still, plenty of other registrars (many which have 1 click registrations) which will work just fine!

i honestly didn't run into this issue yet.. regged a domain with GD successfully last night which has just expired the same day (9th april) about 4 hours prior to regging it.

Went fine for me *scratching my head*

I reg'd two expired domains yesterday and one today right after they expired/became available and had no problems at all. I wonder if there is some other kind of issue preventing some users from regging them or if maybe this is just domains they consider premium domains?

If they considered them premium they'd hold them ransom at a premium price.

As I said, I managed to reg one about an hour after the drop but I also tested an availability check on few other random drops, all were unavailable and then became available at exactly the same time.

I was wondering whether this is not some move initiated by Verizon to test avenues for abolishing drop catching. I do not exactly see how adding another 48h period after drop would help, but ..... Last few days I have been working with other registrars to catch domains in drop since GoDaddy was always fashionably late to be effective ( usually it takes about 1-2 minutes for good domain to be registered if it drops, in my experience). Godaddy lost lot of business this way.

If this is true then godaddy must be loose more dropped domains.

domainer can go with namesilo or other provider to hand reg it.

IMO.

I had exactly the same issue with GD...

First the dropped domains showed up as available for registration - BUT only for a few seconds.
Then the dropped domains where again unavailable.
Exactly at 8 PM UTC (when the dropping time ends) the dropped domains where available for registration.

...and I thought it was only an bug

UPDATE:
The day before yesterday Namecheap showed dropped domains as available (at the dropping time) and GD as unavailable.
Yesterday: GD and Namecheap showed dropped domains as unavailable (at the dropping time) although live whois services showed the domains as available.

I was also unsuccessful with Dynadot yesterday, but I thought it was due to domains which might have been snatched by somebody else. Has anybody succeeded registering expired domains with Dynadot in real time (when dopping) yesterday??????