advice Auction missing in GoDaddy search results

[GBA]

Hello fellows

I'm having an issue with a live 7-day auction on GD. Just realized I cannot find it through Auction search results.

Yes, it is live, and present in my panel, also searchable through main domain availaiblity search. Am I missing anything, or just having bad luck with GD? Tested it on some other names, looks fine.

Please advise, thanks.

 

[GBA]

But @Joe Styler , logging in to an auctions account doesn't mean the name will suddenly show up. If excluding adult names is the default, and people don't know to turn it off or don't want to turn it off (myself included), then the name will still not be visible. So saying serious buyers are logged in doesn't mean much, if anything, as far as the auction getting visibility is concerned.

I also doubt any remotely serious bidders are doing their GoDaddy auctions buying through the home page search box. They're probably browsing the most active list or a saved search, which both would exclude these falsely flagged "adult" domains. If the only way a falsely flagged domain can be seen is by paying for promotion elsewhere, you're not earning your commission. This guy got lucky in that nobody placed a bid, but if one person found it he may have seriously undersold the domain.

I realize you run a lot of auctions, but those millions a month are including Afternic listings that are put in as auctions but aren't really auctions. Many more are expired inventory, and that's your business whether or not a certain percentage getting falsely flagged are acceptable as it only impacts your bottom line. But how many are auctions actually started by a user on your platform, I'm talking about the 7-day ones? And of those how many are actually flagged as adult at all? I would guess less than a hundred a day get flagged. Certainly that is a volume that could be manually reviewed for accuracy.

I don't see the other types of auctions as worth reviewing because the scale is too big, but improving the algorithm could help for those as well. A purely numeric domain shouldn't get flagged for having 69 in it, unless that is the entirety of the SLD.

At the very minimum you should send the seller an email warning him that his domain was flagged as adult so if it isn't an adult domain, he knows to reach out and get it corrected before it is too late. Or at least show it somewhere prominent in the interface.

In the meantime, I'm going to start trolling the adult listings trying to find ones that are incorrectly flagged, as I'll probably get them dirt cheap due to a significant reduction in visibility

I'm not trying to make a big deal about something that probably affects very few, but if I listed something like 1069*com (not mine) at no reserve, and only a tiny percent of people saw it because it was flagged as adult, I would be really upset.

Good point, I think - a mere automatic warning would prevent the problem, too.

Btw, in advanced searching it wasn't showing up either. And I think for liquid names (like numerical, LLLL etc) the advanced searching is main gate for the bidders looking rather for a pattern and not for anything specific, to be found through main search.

 

[Michael]

If you are logged in you should see adult listings by default. You have to go into your settings to turn that off manually. I just checked an account to confirm that but if you are seeing something else let me know and I will look into it further.

I tried several accounts that I had never used to log into the auctions section with, so I couldn't have changed the setting. All had "Filter out domain names listed as adult" selected already. Maybe it is a new change to have the other option selected as default, as these accounts are all several months to a few years old, but I'm not seeing what you're seeing. Even so, if filtering out adult was the default for many years I bet a very high percentage of people have it selected. Your tech guys could run a query and tell you how many I'm sure.