Afternic - Official Thread

[GoDaddy]

Hello NamePros!
By popular demand, we have launched a dedicated feedback thread for Afternic, the GoDaddy-owned domain name marketplace.

We have created this thread as a way for you to tell us what works, what doesn't work, and what features you'd like to see at Afternic (please be constructive with your feedback). We're looking forward to hearing from the domain investment community to help us shape the future of Afternic.

We will also be sharing Afternic product updates in this thread.

Please note that this thread is not meant for support. Please email our support team at [email protected] for assistance.

 

[NameGroove]

@NameGroove - You're presenting the creative process as opposed to the tools that perform the final action: find what you're looking for.

Could very well be. If it turns out most founders, small business owners, and entrepreneurs name their company by searching for their exact match keyword + TLD on Google first - I surely will be quite surprised! It wouldn't even occur to me to start there. After all, Google doesn't know if the name i want is avail for sale... the registrar does. But what I think is irrelevant. I want to know what founders, small business owners, and entrepreneurs do. Maybe I'll pop a poll onto Reddit and get some feedback.

 

[GoDaddy]

@GoDaddy, I am using the Custom Lander. I changed my default CL to BIN+LTO+MO.
But it doesn't reflect when I'm adding new domain names. It still defaults to the BIN+LTO Custom Lander.

And I have to manually change them in every domain name I'm trying to add.

Look into this.

Hi @Gabriel360,
Could you DM us an example domain name? We're happy to take a look, but an example domain name is helpful.

Dear Afternic/godaddy, @GoDaddy
Last week i have been testing many of my afternic landers on google search and i found out nothing indexed by google !!!
This is very important issue need to be taken seriously !!! , I think This SEO issue causing a general decline in sales we all noticed !!
In the past we could see DAN landers indexed and found when we search at google , BUT afternic landers NOT AT ALL !!!
I am not mentioning names of two of competitors landers in the market that in 80% their landers are indexed by google !! Even though this competitors are small compare to the potentials of afternic/godaddy !!

Can you explain why nothing indexed ?? And when you will find solution and fix this SEO issue that will benefit all of us ??


.

You’re correct - we haven’t prioritized SEO indexing for domains pointed to our For Sale landers, and this has been our approach for quite some time.

Following testing, it's something we monitored closely - this hasn’t negatively affected sales or overall traffic on the platform. While seeing your own domains in search results may look reassuring, in practice, SEO indexing of landers hasn’t proven to be a meaningful source of leads, and can ultimately harm any marketplace's ability to show up at all.

That said, we’re always exploring ways to expand our reach and connect with an even broader audience beyond our distribution network, and we'll closely monitor and analyze any evolution in search engines that would suggest it was a beneficial source of leads.

Speaking of expanding our reach, you may notice some new initiatives being tested in the near future...

 

[Dane]

you may notice some new initiatives being tested in the near future...

We may. Or you could just tell us about them here.

 

[zomainhacks]

We may. Or you could just tell us about them here.

Boost 2.0 ?

 

[Acroplex]

Hi @Gabriel360,
Could you DM us an example domain name? We're happy to take a look, but an example domain name is helpful.


You’re correct - we haven’t prioritized SEO indexing for domains pointed to our For Sale landers, and this has been our approach for quite some time.

Following testing, it's something we monitored closely - this hasn’t negatively affected sales or overall traffic on the platform. While seeing your own domains in search results may look reassuring, in practice, SEO indexing of landers hasn’t proven to be a meaningful source of leads, and can ultimately harm any marketplace's ability to show up at all.

That said, we’re always exploring ways to expand our reach and connect with an even broader audience beyond our distribution network, and we'll closely monitor and analyze any evolution in search engines that would suggest it was a beneficial source of leads.

Speaking of expanding our reach, you may notice some new initiatives being tested in the near future...

Your approach isn't related to SEO. Search Engine Optimization is not related to getting indexed per se.

You're saying this hasn't affected sales—this is absurd and I strongly dispute it. The claim that visibility of domains in searches would hurt your own marketplace is a) false and b) selfish in its context. You are effectively disarming a domain's natural presence in Google results.

Please explain why you're deviating from the standard practices of other marketplaces, including the now defunct DAN.com. All you have to do is serve indexable content of substance before the redirect.

Yes, that's "cheating" Google and yes, that's how this game works.

 

[DrJacoby]

Boost 2.0 ?

IndexBoost. For 5% extra commission, your domains will be indexed by Google.

 

[NameGroove]

Following testing, it's something we monitored closely - this hasn’t negatively affected sales or overall traffic on the platform. While seeing your own domains in search results may look reassuring, in practice, SEO indexing of landers hasn’t proven to be a meaningful source of leads, and can ultimately harm any marketplace's ability to show up at all.

Thanks for confirming GoDaddy. And exactly what I figured.

To me, it makes sense. I see no reason for GoDaddy to misinform or mislead here. After all they earn a significant amount of money in commissions from Aftermarket sales. They are a publicly traded company. They need that revenue - and SEO landing page prioritization (if testing showed it helped) is an easy way to get more revenue. I'm hard pressed to think of why they'd ignore it (if it were true). If I was the CEO and discovered employees were rolling out programs that reduced revenues (which is what others will have you believe) - they'd be fired on the spot.

Unless Atom's response differs, I'm personally moving on from worrying about this.

 

[DomainRecap]

To me, it makes sense. I see no reason for GoDaddy to misinform or mislead here. After all they earn a significant amount of money in commissions from Aftermarket sales.

I'm not sure this is even close to the the truth, as Private Domain Sales are a dwindling piece of their overall pie and unimportant to their future plans (as told to investors), and the main benefit to still offering our domains through GoDaddy is to drive new customer traffic there.

They are telling a half-truth, in that with a vertically-integrated monolith like GoDaddy, risking their SEO ranking to supply more search leads to our domains is a battle you're never going to win. GoDaddy never stated that NO LEADS or SALES come from SEO search links, only that these are not "meaningful'.

Uni is dead, Dan is dead, and now Afternic is effectively dead, and believe me, GoDaddy just cares about customer traffic and building multi-level sales from it.

 

[Acroplex]

Unlike others, I am not that gullible to be swayed by a single unsatisfactory response in a sea of complaints.

If that were the case, why would Afternic charge us 30% commission just to allow us to use our own DNS?

Think about it: when you pile a million domains on a single URL you're reaping a lot of traffic. You can then test & play with it as you wish. But I am not putting that part of GD's business under the microscope; what's at stake here is the ability to index (and rank) in Google, which is a proven way to get organic sales leads.

GoDaddy wants everyone to go to GoDaddy.com, search for a domain, and be sold unregistered .tld alternatives all while *maybe* your premium $1,888 (LOL) .com sells.

As someone said already, GD expects us to forget about all these "little" details and live with them. Be that guy, by all means. I'm out but don't say I didn't warn you.

 

[Optixgroup]

SEO indexing of landers hasn’t proven to be a meaningful source of leads, and can ultimately harm any marketplace's ability to show up at all.

@GoDaddy
Can you please elaborate how this would cause harm? I'm willing to believe that SEO indexing doesn't significantly move the needle on STR, but active harm is quite a leap from there.

 

[kor]

While seeing your own domains in search results may look reassuring, in practice, SEO indexing of landers hasn’t proven to be a meaningful source of leads, and can ultimately harm any marketplace's ability to show up at all.

I have a project on organic products and I am thinking of implementing it. I decided ‘Red Apple’ as a brand, and as someone who does not understand these things very much, I typed into the search engine ‘red apple domain buy’.

What a coincidence that redapple . com is not listed in the search results because the seller trusted the authority of AN / GD and directed their portfolio to your platform. Guess what! Both the platform and the seller are losing money because of a team of narcissistic know-nothings who think SEO and even search engine indexing is unnecessary. But who cares about indexing and SEO because everyone was already going directly to GD and fulfilling all their domain name needs, right? And there is also a big discount: .SUCKS only $99.99!

It is a huge fiasco that someone who lacks empathy and who cannot even visualise such a simple anecdote in his mind comes here and claims to be a domain expert, representing a brand like GD which sits at the top of the domain industry. @GoDaddy if you are new to these business, we have a course called Domain Academy and it is only $22.49 per month!

Or just acknowledge your mistakes and find a solution. This is your job and you earn a lot of money because you are expected to do this job. Otherwise, company revenues will drop drastically and you will lose your milestone business partners and there will be no Afternic in the near future. Perhaps that is your ultimate goal.

Your lies and evasions sound so funny. I just wanted you to know.

 

[DomainRecap]

Otherwise, company revenues will drop drastically and you will lose your milestone business partners and there will be no Afternic in the near future.

Huh? There is no Afternic right now, and it's all GoDaddy.

Sales, payments, searches, brokers, all GD and the only thing Afternic is kept around for is to use as an existing backend to list private domains on GD.

 

[love4ever]

. After all, Google doesn't know if the name i want is avail for sale... the registrar does. But what I think is irrelevant. I want to know what founders, small business owners, and entrepreneurs do. Maybe I'll pop a poll onto Reddit and get some feedback.

- YES Google doesn't know , But if it is indexed and you search in google you will find the name there .
- Your registrar also doesn't know until you search in it and find the name .
They will not read your mind and ring your phone to tell you we found the name, In both cases you have to search about it , and if you don't use google to check before, Others do .

** Potential buyers/investors nowadays ( hard times ) they check all the possible ways and dig everywhere before
to decide to pay $$$$ their hard earned money for a domain name .

.

 

[Janoss]

@GoDaddy
Can you please elaborate how this would cause harm? I'm willing to believe that SEO indexing doesn't significantly move the needle on STR, but active harm is quite a leap from there.

I'm also curious how harm can happen to a domain or marketplace by trying to index a sales lander page properly in search engines. Every domain marketplace except GoDaddy's does this.

Also, @GoDaddy how did you test and conclude that it didn't bring any meaningful leads/sales? I don't think Afternic landers have ever been indexed properly so wondering how you came to this conclusion.

 

[love4ever]

Hi @Gabriel360,
Could you DM us an example domain name? We're happy to take a look, but an example domain name is helpful.


You’re correct - we haven’t prioritized SEO indexing for domains pointed to our For Sale landers, and this has been our approach for quite some time.

Following testing, it's something we monitored closely - this hasn’t negatively affected sales or overall traffic on the platform. While seeing your own domains in search results may look reassuring, in practice, SEO indexing of landers hasn’t proven to be a meaningful source of leads, and can ultimately harm any marketplace's ability to show up at all.

That said, we’re always exploring ways to expand our reach and connect with an even broader audience beyond our distribution network, and we'll closely monitor and analyze any evolution in search engines that would suggest it was a beneficial source of leads.

Speaking of expanding our reach, you may notice some new initiatives being tested in the near future...

Thank you for the unconvincing answers !

But can you explain one point please : Your related technical team they BLOCKED google from indexing crawlers for afternic landers !!
This feature was available on Dan landers , WHY it is blocked now ?? This decision came from WHERE and based on WHAT reason ??


.

 

[love4ever]

I'm also curious how harm can happen to a domain or marketplace by trying to index a sales lander page properly in search engines. Every domain marketplace except GoDaddy's does this.

Also, @GoDaddy how did you test and conclude that it didn't bring any meaningful leads/sales? I don't think Afternic landers have ever been indexed properly so wondering how you came to this conclusion.

They never tested because testing a empty indexed domain in the past without description is useless !

.

 

[JB Lions]

If you believe the loss of existence in Google—not just ranking—of domains for sale on Afternic is ok, feel free to buy banned domains. I know I wouldn't.

They’re not banned domains. It’s like when I start making a site with Wordpress you can choose for the site not to be indexed while you’re working on it. It’s just not indexed.

 

[Future Sensors]

It’s like when I start making a site with Wordpress

I indeed suspect that it is gross incompetence.

 

[JB Lions]

I indeed suspect that it is gross incompetence.

? What does that mean

 

[Future Sensors]

? What does that mean

That I think there is no strategy behind it at GoDaddy, but it is just ignorance how to configure this. Just like someone who is just starting with Wordpress. Speaking of which:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/ne...requiring-godaddy-to-secure-hosting-services/