marketplace Afternic BIN Lander Bug

[411domains]

To those who are using Godaddy/Afternic NS5/NS6 BIN Landers:

Be advised, the "Buy Now" buttons are not working on the landers.

So far, the only domains not affected are those that are opted-in to the Fast Transfer network.

For everything else, you may want to consider the NS3/NS4 landers or an alternative for the time being until they get the issue resolved.

I suspect this has been an unknown issue for quite awhile and as I'm sure you can imagine, there are a lot of domains affected by this issue.

I discovered the issue at the end of June while testing the BIN landers and knew something was terribly wrong when I was directed to an empty cart after ticking the buy now button. (I reported it immediately. Unfortunately, it didn't actually get seen or heard until a follow-up this week.)

Needless to say, they are now aware of the issue and working "feverishly" on it.

In the event this takes them longer than expected as I suspect it will, I thought it best that everyone using the NS5/NS6 BIN landers be made aware of the issue.

 

[ET76]

It is not a problem of something breaking for .biz they have never been supported for BIN with the lander. I spoke with the team and they may allow them in the future.

So they are supported by Afternic Fast transfer but not supported for BIN on Afternic 5/6 only or all networks? Please enlighten.

 

[ET76]

I decided to move all my .biz to Dan landing page for now.

 

[silentg]

Tried 2 .com domains I own and it goes to empty cart or submission error.

 

[411domains]

I don't know about anyone else, but for the past 24 hours I've been experiencing Afternic errors.

 

[Future Sensors]

I don't know about anyone else, but for the past 24 hours I've been experiencing Afternic errors.

Saw this error too, but only once today.

 

[Future Sensors]

Thanks, Joe. You are awesome, as always

He sure is, but his team seems to be live hacking on a production system all the time.

 

[Joe Styler]

I'll let the Afternic team know to check out this thread. I got the info on .xyz from them. I have a meeting later today with the team in charge of these landers and I will bring it up.

The fact that you can sometimes see an extension working on a BIN lander and sometimes not is more complicated than I can quickly explain here. Officially we do not support those extensions. Just because it "works" doesn't mean it should or always will. The list of of TLDs that work with the BIN landers now are COM, CO, ORG, NET, CA, XXX. If it not one of these it may not work and you shouldnt be using the BIN landers for it.

Things will change in the future to allow more extensions but I don't have an exact date.

I'll try to keep this quick and high level. There are a lot of ways something can show up for sale on GD and be added to the cart. For domain landers this is also true. The landers use the GD cart to check out. The cart and the domain team have various orders of priority that impact things up and downstream.

So think of the main domain search for GoDaddy. You type in a domain to see if it's available. There are a lot of feeds and variables that go into what is shown as the result on the page. There may be hundreds of checks to various data sources, think registries to see if the domain is available or not. Among these streams there are calls to Afternic which is an aggregator of domain listings and feeds it to various places. The listing may be coming from AN directly or it may be being fed to, as one example, Godaddy auctions as a consumer of the AN feed. The auctions and AN and other feeds act differently and have different rules for the cart and how they get there. This all takes place in a split second and you see results when you type in the name you want to find. But these various behind the scenes checks have different priorities and this is true on the BIN lander and it impacts results.

So this is one of many examples but let's say today the auctions feed is in priority and tomorrow the AN feed is or another feed, the results up and downstream are impacted. And there can be split tests or different results based on markets ad infinitum. So you may see something different work in America, and not work in America, (based on testing) and a completely different thing in Canada on the same day at the same time.

The bottom line is there is always a lot of change and things are much more complex behind the scenes than most people realize. There is a lot of scientific data analysis all designed to help sell more domains which includes premium domain and BIN lander domains. This is not like you running a small business and your site shows one thing all the time no matter who sees it, or maybe two if you are doing a split test.

So when you say this works for me or it used to, or it doesnt here or there... I am going to tell you what we support. If something else works, great but it might not work later today or next week, or it may not be showing for half the World right now. I hope that helps.

ADDED Edit: believe it or not this is the quick high level version. I am not going to go into more detail than this

 

[Future Sensors]

I'll let the Afternic team know to check out this thread. I got the info on .xyz from them. I have a meeting later today with the team in charge of these landers and I will bring it up.

The fact that you can sometimes see an extension working on a BIN lander and sometimes not is more complicated than I can quickly explain here. Officially we do not support those extensions. Just because it "works" doesn't mean it should or always will. The list of of TLDs that work with the BIN landers now are COM, CO, ORG, NET, CA, XXX. If it not one of these it may not work and you shouldnt be using the BIN landers for it.

Things will change in the future to allow more extensions but I don't have an exact date.

I'll try to keep this quick and high level. There are a lot of ways something can show up for sale on GD and be added to the cart. For domain landers this is also true. The landers use the GD cart to check out. The cart and the domain team have various orders of priority that impact things up and downstream.

So think of the main domain search for GoDaddy. You type in a domain to see if it's available. There are a lot of feeds and variables that go into what is shown as the result on the page. There may be hundreds of checks to various data sources, think registries to see if the domain is available or not. Among these streams there are calls to Afternic which is an aggregator of domain listings and feeds it to various places. The listing may be coming from AN directly or it may be being fed to, as one example, Godaddy auctions as a consumer of the AN feed. The auctions and AN and other feeds act differently and have different rules for the cart and how they get there. This all takes place in a split second and you see results when you type in the name you want to find. But these various behind the scenes checks have different priorities and this is true on the BIN lander and it impacts results.

So this is one of many examples but let's say today the auctions feed is in priority and tomorrow the AN feed is or another feed, the results up and downstream are impacted. And there can be split tests or different results based on markets ad infinitum. So you may see something different work in America, and not work in America, (based on testing) and a completely different thing in Canada on the same day at the same time.

The bottom line is there is always a lot of change and things are much more complex behind the scenes than most people realize. There is a lot of scientific data analysis all designed to help sell more domains which includes premium domain and BIN lander domains. This is not like you running a small business and your site shows one thing all the time no matter who sees it, or maybe two if you are doing a split test.

So when you say this works for me or it used to, or it doesnt here or there... I am going to tell you what we support. If something else works, great but it might not work later today or next week, or it may not be showing for half the World right now. I hope that helps.

ADDED Edit: believe it or not this is the quick high level version. I am not going to go into more detail than this

Thanks for the detailed explanation of what goes on behind the scenes, Joe. It does confuse me a bit. Would you advise us not to report again when an NS5/NS6 BIN button for .com gives such an error? It's not only about errors with new gTLDs.

 

[Joe Styler]

For .com is should work no matter what. If there is an issue you should definitely reach out to service @ afternic .com as I am not always on Namepros they will be quicker.

 

[kor]

The list of of TLDs that work with the BIN landers now are COM, CO, ORG, NET, CA, XXX.

XXX is definitely a great decision!

Keep up the good work.

 

[411domains]

Apparently their entire system has a case of the Mondays, because as of right now, you can't add anything to the cart...new reg domains, dropping domains, expiry auction domains or even Fast Transfer active domains.

 

[silentg]

I am getting the same error on .com domain.

 

[sg08]

I moved all stuff to Dan/GD Europe.

 

[411domains]

Yeah, they're having a major issue with their cart right now.

 

[twiki]

I guess not work for any extension
including .US
Show attachment 219469

I have only .COMS and they all throw the same error.

I might have been lost one month of lander-based sales already.

Looking for a replacement now.

 

[kor]

Even after weeks, the only answer they can give is "we are aware of the situation! Just wait a little longer. It's about to get better. It should be fixed now. Let's see..."

Look at the state of the billion dollar company.

Antics!

 

[411domains]

Now their phone lines are down. This is just getting to be too much!!!

 

[twiki]

Now their phone lines are down. This is just getting to be too much!!!

What the hell...?

Edit: Yes they are down. Is Afternic/GD trying to get rid of us altogether...?

 

[kor]

This situation is starting to feel like an inside job!

It's a huge company, it has dozens of employees.
It is inexplicable that they can't fix a simple web page for weeks and cause even more problems...

 

[DrJacoby]

It's a huge company, it has dozens of employees.

Dozens? They have about 6,600 employees.