discuss GoDaddy get's highest bids only on expired domain names

Well known. The expired auctions get alot of attention. I wouldn't dare putting my names on auction without reserve unless I know it's a PREMIUM name.

Experienced the same, sold two good names for pennies due to the lack of exposure, while worse names sell a lot more on their expired auctions.

As far as I'm concerned there are two ways to filter names at GD auctions (let me know if there are more), either on their own platform which is anything but easy to use, or expireddomains.net which is a lightweight easy to use website.

When you visit Godaddy's own platform to see public auction domains you have to click "ending soon". otherwise only featured and expiring listings comes up.



Newly submitted listings on GD's platform are not visible unless you search specifically for that certain keyword. So there is no exposure for freshly submitted names at all, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

I guess most people who tend to bid on names regularly using expireddomains.net, at least I would be very much surprised if that wasn't the case.

On expireddomains.net, your GD public auction names are under the GD TDNAM button only, with a lot of other listing types. And I'm pretty sure the most frequently hit button on expireddomains.net, is "godaddy expired" (From the Godaddy selection) so no wonder why GD public auction domains end up selling a lot less than their expiring counterparts.

If I remember well back in the day GD 7 day public auction domains were also listed in the GD Expired list on expireddomains.net, but that has been changed I guess as they were not really "expiring" names, and that change may have influenced the results we see today in terms of investor submitted domains at GD. But let @kostaki confirm that.

So you either pay for a featured listing, and do your best to promote it, or you most likely gonna sell low.

There is maybe a misconception by some that a public auction will conclude with an enduser sale/price.

Without the right name, exposure and leads - all you have is false hope and reseller prices if lucky.

Trent1000 said:

On expireddomains.net, your GD public auction names are under the GD TDNAM button only, with a lot of other listing types. And I'm pretty sure the most frequently hit button on expireddomains.net, is "godaddy expired" (From the Godaddy selection) so no wonder why GD public auction domains end up selling a lot less than their expiring counterparts.

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I've noticed the same. If your public auction happens to get a bid, then it's also under - GoDaddy Auctions With Bids, which is one of my saved searches.

Yea it's not great but it's better than Flippa. I need to try Namejet.

Trent1000 said:

If I remember well back in the day GD 7 day public auction domains were also listed in the GD Expired list on expireddomains.net, but that has been changed I guess as they were not really "expiring" names, and that change may have influenced the results we see today in terms of investor submitted domains at GD. But let @kostaki confirm that.

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That is correct. That non expired domains were in the godaddy expired list was a bug. I fixed that a couple years ago.

rathish said:

Hi , i have listed many of my good domains in godaddy , and even paid 35$ to namebio promotion too . But i received bids only around 50-100$ . Just now i noticed that Godaddy get's highest bids only on expired domain names

Visit "https://auctions.godaddy.com/" and in the "Most Active" you could see nearly all domains are expired domains...

I see the promotion for godaddy's expired domain name on namebio . So , what is going on in godaddy auctions ?
Is godaddy paying and promoting the expired auctions ?
How do people only bid only on low quality expired domains rather than high quality domain public auction ?

Finally has anyone sold your domain for more than mid X,XXX $ in godaddy , if so please share your domain name ...

Are all the domains selling above 5k mark are only godaddy's expired domains ?

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GD make 100% profit when they sold a expired domain while they only take 20% as comission on regular auction domain.

It is very true that expiring domains get a lot more love than "regular" domains at auction. There are a couple of reasons for this, most of them already pointed out by others here in the thread, but I like to add that it also has to do with how many of us investors think. We often look at domain names that are owned by another investor as domains that have been available for sale for a while and thus far has not been sold to an end-user yet. We, therefore, conclude that the domain name is worth paying less for than a domain name that hasn't been "marketed" before. While in reality a non-expiring domain at auction might be recently picked up on the drop or acquired from a non-investor and put up for auction by a domainer for a quick but profitable flip.

For this reason, I always try including both expiring and "regular" domains in my newsletter and because it doesn't say in the email which type of domain name it is, both of them get an equal amount of clicks and exposure. This really shows that in the end it's the domain name itself that matters and not the status of it

People are buying expired domains for SEO reasons in some cases where its does not make sense when you see "a bad" domain name sell.

One example is health industry domains

Find an old (10 years plus), well backlinked (1000+ with some .edu links) domain related to the health industry someone will be bidding up the price.

There is another big factor: Goddady only shows appraisal value on expired domain auctions, in expireddomains.net users sort Godaddy expired auctions by appraisal value and they visit/bid top domains in the list.
this value is hidden in public auctions!

Trent1000 said:

Experienced the same, sold two good names for pennies due to the lack of exposure, while worse names sell a lot more on their expired auctions.

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I've just talked to Godaddy about one of those sales I mentioned above. As it turned out I literally sold the last one for pennies, or cents.

Be aware if you sell a domain name on Godaddy's 7 day public auction, and you set no reserve, the minimum price will be $20. And if only one bidder shows up which let's face it, highly possible, the name will sell for $20.

In that case you will pay $15 to Godaddy, and if you're lucky enough the rest will cover the fee of the transaction of the remaining amount.


What's even more funny, if this little tragicomedy wasn't enough, after this message I replied them that I may have just donated the damn name to the buyer, that would at least made me feel good.

And their reply was, next time use Godaddy Appraisals...



Sure thing Godaddy...

Now I don't blame Godaddy for my own stupid mistake, even though I don't think it's fair to ask a fixed $15 commission on low sales (they could just use a % based commission system on low sales, but again daddy is a big boy, need to eat a lot), I'm just saying be aware that Godaddy 7 days public auction may not be the best choice to sell your domain names.