Circumventing GoDaddy Expiry Auctions

[411domains]

Has anyone noticed the thousands upon thousands of Godaddy expired auctions ending without bids that never return to the market as a closeout?

Someone has discovered a way to circumvent the regular expired auction process.

They appear to be using an API that places backorders within seconds of auction close. Thus eliminating all competition, auction extensions and closeout conversion times for the cost of a backorder. (In their case, thousands of backorders.)

Although the auctions are already closed, these after the fact backorders are being counted as bids.

In my opinion, any bid that comes in after the auction closes should be automatically canceled and refunded.

What are your thoughts?

BTW, this has been a known issue for awhile.

 

[trelgor]

Removing the backorder technique for Godaddy closeouts is a major, major downgrade and huge inconvenience for users of Godaddy auctions.

Instead of taking 15 seconds to place a backorder to possibly win a closeout domain, you are saying that we will have keep refreshing the domain listing over and over again for hours until it randomly hits the closeout hours after the end of the $12 auction. I guess we are all going to have really strong index fingers from all the refreshing.

I fail to see how this improves my user experience. If anything this change will be a huge time waster with no added benefit.

This angle has not been adressed @Joe Styler. The alternative is not viable. I think there is a need for a post auction backorder service.

 

[Jasonn]

Removing the backorder technique for Godaddy closeouts is a major, major downgrade and huge inconvenience for users of Godaddy auctions.

Instead of taking 15 seconds to place a backorder to possibly win a closeout domain, you are saying that we will have keep refreshing the domain listing over and over again for hours until it randomly hits the closeout hours after the end of the $12 auction. I guess we are all going to have really strong index fingers from all the refreshing.

I fail to see how this improves my user experience. If anything this change will be a huge time waster with no added benefit.

It doesn't matter anymore as you'll never beat the backorder bot anyhow. You might win the domains they don't want but chances are they will take it.

 

[Joe Styler]

I technically meant _number_ of watchers. It may well be that the system actually allowed to see a list of watching parties. @Joe Styler can you please clarify the response in aspects of "see watchers" or "see total number of watchers". Thank you.

I dont know what you are asking. I never heard of any way for people to see the actual people who are watching the auction. If you follow this thread or several others you can even see that people are upset that we do not show the bidder handle of a person bidding we anonymize it, so it would be a pretty giant leap to get to somehow seeing who is bidding on a domain or watching a domain or doing anything on a domain that could be tied to an individual, our system isn't set up to do anything like that. The only way I am aware of ever being able to see who was bidding on a domain is to watch who shows up in the WHOIS after the auction is over and awarded, assuming they are not using privacy.
So if you are asking that I don't know of any way that anyone could see watchers. # of watchers was released for a while publicly, that was changed due to public opinion from our customers including threads on here. We thought we had removed that completely but there was still one way to see it that was removed a couple weeks back.

 

[Joe Styler]

You are right. It is a Godaddy-associated shell corporation that is actively warehousing these domains. This is pure speculation but the reason I think it is a shell corporation is due to the fact that Godaddy says they don't bid on their own auctions and this is the shady way around it. Domain warehousing is probably the reason the Godaddy appraisal tool was developed, so their "partner" would have one easy criteria for determining which domains to register en masse. Registrars need to go back to serving their customers instead of competing with them. The conflict of interest is just sickening and is running rampant in the industry.

We don't have a shell company. We're not selling data to anyone, or any other conspiracy. We have an active customer base. Always have since I started working in the Aftermarket here ten years ago.

 

[Josh R]

Out of the hundreds of expiring domains I watch every day, 99% of them don't make it to closeouts. They literally become unavailable the moment an expired auction finishes.

It's the most annoying thing ever because I know for a fact no human can be snapping these all up the moment they come available.

 

[DomainsMaven]

.

 

[tonyk2000]

I dont know what you are asking

Thanks Joe for further confirmation. My question was inspired by a fact that you missed the word "number" in original phrase "number of wathchers". When there is a bug, we never know what might be the bug about exactly.

 

[Arca]

@Joe Styler - It would be good if you could get the loophole closed before May 25. When WHOIS becomes a black box post-GDRP there will be no way for users to empirically check whether or not the backorder loophole is being exploited or not. It would be nice if you could fix this while there is still some degree of transparency surrounding this issue, and we can see for ourselves that it has been fixed. That won't be possible after May 25. As the loophole was supposed to be closed by April 29, I hope we can expect to see a fix in place a few days before May 25 at least.

 

[Rich]

Maybe godaddy will take the bug bounty off hold once updates are complete. I wonder if there are plans to increase the drop catching abilities as well? Looking forward to improvements.

 

[tonyk2000]

@Joe Styler - since you are fixing the things, what about the following:

- Expiring auctions with a single bid are not searcheable in "most active" section of the website (or, afaik, anywhere esle on GD if the customer is "regular". Correct. Since 1 bid is definitely not the most active auction. It works as it should. I'd say that 2 or 3 bids are also barely active auctions, and should not be shown in search.

- However, as soon as the first bid is placed (and so it becomes one and only single bid), this fact immediately becomes known to your api users, some of which do run (3rd party) expiring domain search websites, and on these sites each single bid is reported publicly.
THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN

@Joe Styler it would be great if this loophole could be taken care of as well. Please let us know.

 

[Joe Styler]

It is really easy to see bids.

 

[Ategy]

@tonyk2000 .. I am the first to say there are tons of things that need to be fixed at GoDaddy .. but if you want to see all names with bids just do an Advanced Search with the only parameters being:

"# of Bids" "More Than" "0"

You can even save the search so that it's easier to refresh. I have a search like that set up .. with the sort order set to chronologically ascending so that I see the ones closest to ending at the top.

 

[tonyk2000]

@Ategy.com - thanks for the tip I really was unaware of this.... Maybe because I never search anything on the auctions website, or track what folks are bidding on.... All I do (and always did) is just in watchlist-auctionsWon-auctionsLost section.

 

[Ategy]

... # of watchers was released for a while publicly, that was changed due to public opinion from our customers including threads on here. We thought we had removed that completely but there was still one way to see it that was removed a couple weeks back.

So does that mean the actual data field is still lingering around in the backend potentially accessible indirectly?

@Joe Styler .. just to be extra clear .. while number of watchers is no longer "publicly" listed ..

1) Is Number of Watchers still available to anyone with API or ANY* other form of access?

2) Was Number of Watchers ever available to anyone with API (or ANY other way) when that information was not available publicly through conventional GoDaddy auction pages (before and/or after it was "public")?

3) Does anyone with API or any other access have any way to figure out number of watchers indirectly?

4) Are the answers for the above questions the same for if there is/was a way for them to know if there are ANY watchers (meaning not necessarily the exact number, but just the fact there are any watchers at all vs no watchers)

* By "ANY other form of access", I mean any possible access to the database from API or any other electronic form .. down to the very basic and analogue phone call or email or anything else to someone at GoDaddy. I know it seems nit-picky .. but I think just for clarity's sake, many of us would really like a clear answer that doesn't include the word "publicly" ...

Thanks

 

[Ategy]

Out of the hundreds of expiring domains I watch every day, 99% of them don't make it to closeouts. They literally become unavailable the moment an expired auction finishes.
It's the most annoying thing ever because I know for a fact no human can be snapping these all up the moment they come available.

@Josh R .. this actually isn't the case. Whether GoDaddy wants to admit it or not .. or even know about it (I guarantee to you I can list more bugs on the GoDaddy platform than any GD employee .. lol) .. they have been experiencing some kind of bug/glitch over the past several weeks (possibly months).

Essentially what is happening is that the auction domains from the first 5-10 minutes of the auction day that are NOT won at auction, pass on as intended to closeout (at $11) the usual 5 to 20 minutes later ... but then shortly after the auction day begins any name beyond the first 5-10 minutes with NO bids gets lost in limbo for several hours .. and then all get thrown back into ($11) closeout a few hours after the auction day ends (fairly random .. but to give you an idea .. today's are back up now).

So it appears like domains are being snipped .. but the reality is that for some reason MOST domains DON'T make it to closeout right away! But if you just do a quick search you will see some of the domains there and assume everything is OK .. but the reality is that those domains are only from the first few minutes of the auction day.

I suppose ironically this is likely one of the biggest reasons for this thread .. as everyone wrongly assumes ALL their marked domains are getting snipped .. and while some of them certainly could be .. it isn't necessarily the case!

What really sucks about this is the fact that the automated bots/APIs could still be chugging along for hours pinging every second just waiting to closeout snipe .. while for us human it completely destroys our day if we have to sit around and refresh for hours and hours on end!

Competing at closeout snipping against the API's and bots without this bug is essentially just as futile .. but at least in the past we didn't have to waste hours on end before finding out!

This is the reason I actually started to add $11 closeouts to my daily lists .. to help people see which of the auction names I listed actually passed through AFTER the glitch delay passes.

 

[Arca]

@Josh R .. this actually isn't the case. Whether GoDaddy wants to admit it or not .. or even know about it (I guarantee to you I can list more bugs on the GoDaddy platform than any GD employee .. lol) .. they have been experiencing some kind of bug/glitch over the past several weeks (possibly months).

Essentially what is happening is that the auction domains from the first 5-10 minutes of the auction day that are NOT won at auction, pass on as intended to closeout (at $11) the usual 5 to 20 minutes later ... but then shortly after the auction day begins any name beyond the first 5-10 minutes with NO bids gets lost in limbo for several hours .. and then all get thrown back into ($11) closeout a few hours after the auction day ends (fairly random .. but to give you an idea .. today's are back up now).

So it appears like domains are being snipped .. but the reality is that for some reason MOST domains DON'T make it to closeout right away! But if you just do a quick search you will see some of the domains there and assume everything is OK .. but the reality is that those domains are only from the first few minutes of the auction day.

I suppose ironically this is likely one of the biggest reasons for this thread .. as everyone wrongly assumes ALL their marked domains are getting snipped .. and while some of them certainly could be .. it isn't necessarily the case!

What really sucks about this is the fact that the automated bots/APIs could still be chugging along for hours pinging every second just waiting to closeout snipe .. while for us human it completely destroys our day if we have to sit around and refresh for hours and hours on end!

Competing at closeout snipping against the API's and bots without this bug is essentially just as futile .. but at least in the past we didn't have to waste hours on end before finding out!

This is the reason I actually started to add $11 closeouts to my daily lists .. to help people see which of the auction names I listed actually passed through AFTER the glitch delay passes.

These domains are not "lost in limbo" as WHOIS changes from the former owner to Afternic seconds after auction end. The WHOIS record changes because a backorder has become active post-auction. Those domains never make it to closeouts, as they have already been purchased. They are not being sniped as closeouts. They are being picked by a bot through the backorder loophole. This has been confirmed by Joe Styler himself in this thread, and anyone can use WHOIS to confirm it.

For practically all domains with a $1300+ valuation the WHOIS changes from the former owner to Afternic within seconds or minutes after auction end, as a result of a bot placing backorders for virtually all such domains, late enough for them to not show up as $10 bids, early enough so that they trump the closeout process. They never make it to closeouts, as their purchase has been confirmed right after auction end. This affects several thousand domains each day, and will likely continue to do so until the backorder loophole is closed, which was supposed to happen last week.

For practically all domains with a sub $1300 valuation the WHOIS remains in the former owner's name, indicating that no backorder has won them post auction. They appear as closeouts.

Domains that get closeout sniped will change WHOIS to Afternic once they have been sniped, which previously happened after minutes, these days hours after auction end. Domains that get backorder bought change WHOIS to Afternic seconds after auction end. It's not possible to snipe thousands of domains as closeouts seconds after auction end, especially now that domains take hours to turn into closeout status. These are backorders.

The reason you believe this not taking place is because you seem to largely favor domains that get a low valuation from GoDaddy. I looked at your most recent list of recommended domains, and the first 10 available .COMs all have a valuation below $1300:

domain - gd estimated value
suprememodel.com - $1,166
beatingholdem.com - $1,135
ewgol.com - $972
picardmedia.com - $1,037
urvok.com - $1031
androiddatastorage.com - $1113
annexjewelry.com - $1133
juicebarnewyork.com - $967
worldblackjacknews.com - $378
immortalstones.com - $1,191

If you follow a large portion of domains with a sub $1300 valuation, you will naturally see a large portion of the names you follow go to closeouts, as the backorder bot does not go after those. I can't do a bulk search of your full list due to your formatting, but if you a bulk search yourself my guess is that 95-99% of the .COMs in your will have a valuation below $1300, hence why they were allowed to go to closeouts in the first place.

 

[Ategy]

For practically all domains with a sub $1300 valuation the WHOIS remains in the former owner's name, indicating that no backorder has won them post auction. They appear as closeouts.

Out of the hundreds of expiring domains I watch every day, 99% of them don't make it to closeouts. They literally become unavailable the moment an expired auction finishes..

@Arca .. nope .. I know what you're saying .. and on that you are not incorrect .. but these are actually two separate issues. I do know what you are talking about .. and quite honestly I didn't really notice any distinction expressly because NO domains are currently going to directly closeout anymore (aside from those in the first few minutes of the auction day for some reason).

@Josh R mentioned 99% of the hundred of domains he tracks don't make close out. There is no way 99% of the domains he tracks are exclusively domains evaluated above $1300. There are plenty of great domains that have great attributes that slip through GD's automated valuation. Or any automated valuation for that matter.

So certainly it is true that the ones with the higher automated valuations are getting "backorder snipped" .. literally tens of thousands of other domains disappear from the platform .. and then reappear a few hours after the auctions end. Whereas before they used to be added progressively as the auction day went on from about anywhere between 5 to 20 minutes after that specific auction ended (with no bids).

I haven't paid attention to WhoIs for any of them .. but I do agree 100% that SOME of the missing names are getting backorder snipped. But unless you're checking WhoIs .. there is no difference between domains below or above $1300 .. as they ALL disappear at first. With obviously only the ones that were not backorder sniped and not closeout sniped showing up a few hours after auctions close. (Well .. technically I guess the closeout snipes do appear hours later .. but by very definition only for a few seconds or less before they are snipped.)

Tomorrow take a look at my list beyond the first 30 minutes of auction (to be safe) .. you'll see NONE of the names will show up at closeout for hours. It could be just a couple of hours .. to over 12 hours.


The discussion around the $1300 limit is why I now deliberately try to post more names below that threshold.

Ironically enough .. I think at least some part of this is due to GoDaddy's automated valuations getting significantly better since it launched. Please note that I am not saying it is GOOD .. lol .. just that it is better. More importantly .. while the actual valuation amounts I still find questionable .. the "relative" values to each other I find has also gotten better.

That being said .. there are still far too many garbage domains above $1300 at auction each day .. there's no way that could be a main criteria for these bots.


ADDED: I just did a quick sort of domains on my auction list for today .. and over half (about 60%) of .com's have a GD valuation of over $1300. I'll try to add the GD number permanently to my lists in the next day or two if that helps!

 

[Joe Styler]

So does that mean the actual data field is still lingering around in the backend potentially accessible indirectly?

@Joe Styler .. just to be extra clear .. while number of watchers is no longer "publicly" listed ..

1) Is Number of Watchers still available to anyone with API or ANY* other form of access?

2) Was Number of Watchers ever available to anyone with API (or ANY other way) when that information was not available publicly through conventional GoDaddy auction pages (before and/or after it was "public")?

3) Does anyone with API or any other access have any way to figure out number of watchers indirectly?

4) Are the answers for the above questions the same for if there is/was a way for them to know if there are ANY watchers (meaning not necessarily the exact number, but just the fact there are any watchers at all vs no watchers)

* By "ANY other form of access", I mean any possible access to the database from API or any other electronic form .. down to the very basic and analogue phone call or email or anything else to someone at GoDaddy. I know it seems nit-picky .. but I think just for clarity's sake, many of us would really like a clear answer that doesn't include the word "publicly" ...

Thanks

No one with API can see anything like this. Publicly means what it means any member of the public or our customers. I am not going to comment on what GoDaddy has or does not have, we do a lot of tests and have a lot of competition watching us etc. If you really want to know what happens here internally come and work for us we are a great company. I wouldn't be here 12 years if we weren't. We even have a slide.

 

[trelgor]

No one with API can see anything like this. Publicly means what it means any member of the public or our customers. I am not going to comment on what GoDaddy has or does not have, we do a lot of tests and have a lot of competition watching us etc. If you really want to know what happens here internally come and work for us we are a great company. I wouldn't be here 12 years if we weren't. We even have a slide.

A slide! Hire me.

 

[Rich]

No one with API can see anything like this. Publicly means what it means any member of the public or our customers. I am not going to comment on what GoDaddy has or does not have, we do a lot of tests and have a lot of competition watching us etc. If you really want to know what happens here internally come and work for us we are a great company. I wouldn't be here 12 years if we weren't. We even have a slide.

Sell that poor lady a better domain name

 

[jideofor]

It is really easy to see bids.

What interface is that? Is that on Godaddy?

 

[jideofor]

How about Godaddy stop the bot please so as to give everybody a fair play... Stop the bot bidding!

 

[Joe Styler]

What interface is that? Is that on Godaddy?

It is the advanced search option on Godaddy Auctions. We have some good tools on the auctions site you can use. You can use the ftp file to see daily updates to every single auction on the site. You can scrape that data. We also have automated searches that you can run either as needed or set up to automatically email you your filtered searches every day etc.

 

[wwwweb]

I agree closing the closeout backorders loop actually gives advantage to the bots, humans given now that everyone knows how the loophole works, actually had an advantage over the bots. Now the bots actually have an advantage in sniping out human users.

 

[Jasonn]

I agree closing the closeout backorders loop actually gives advantage to the bots, humans given now that everyone knows how the loophole works, actually had an advantage over the bots. Now the bots actually have an advantage in sniping out human users.

Wasn't this backorder bot beating out everyone who tried to use the loop on domains they targeted?