Death of GoDaddy's Bulk Search Tool?

[Keith DeBoer]

I don't know about you but I use GD's bulk search feature several times a day for the past two years. I considered it to be a valuable tool for finding a few flakes of domain gold amid the chaos of stream bed junk. But now it returns a significant number of false positive search results in the form of Premium Domain listings making the tool a big waste of my time.

Here's how it goes........ I copy paste 100 names from my Excel spreadsheet to the GD bulk domain search box. I click 'search' and the tool lists the names that are available for hand reg.

I click Proceed To Checkout. I am then redirected to this generic search page:

What???

When I search for one of the domains individually I discover that the domain(s) is for sale via Premium listing.

But again when I click Proceed To Checkout --so I can at least see the price-- I am redirected to the generic search page.

When I first encountered this problem 2 weeks ago I thought it would get fixed in a day or two. But every day it's the same issue.

This glitch curtails hand regging AND the potential purchase of domains listed in Premium.

This run around needs to be fixed but just as important, there needs to be a way for domainers to be able to opt out of having Premium Domain listings included in their bulk search results when they are looking for domains to hand reg.

Anyone else having this problem?

@Joe Styler, would you like to comment on this?

 

[Joe Styler]

Godaddy is a huge domainer too so who do you suggest we should use for a smooth bulk searching experience?

Good point but we are different in a couple ways, the most important is that we are not hand registering names or trying to drop catch names or reserve any expired names for ourselves instead of letting them go to auction, or bidding on our auctions etc to build our domain portfolio, we are buying some existing portfolios and seeking to help liquidity in the market for more businesses / end users to buy good names to use as a their business. We do not bid against anyone or hand register domains.

We also are not prioritizing our own names vs any customer listed domains so the search results are fair for everyone and focused on what we think the end user will purchase from years of data. At the end of the day it does a lot to help domain investors in the long run, we use the same tools customers do which helps us see the issues and get them resolved, we joined the ICA and contribute to them which helps protect Domainers interests legally and we have even more of a reason to help spread the word about how important buying a good premium domain name can be for someone's business on the Aftermarket.

 

[DNVantage]

One problem with the GD bulk search is, you can't mix tlds, when you want to search a list with each name in different tld, and not all the checked tlds for each name.

Dynadot and Uniregistrar make bulk search really easy. They could still improve but quite good as is too.

Also, some tld are just not there in the GS bulk search form, for example .co.in, .firm.in

 

[vivaldi]

Good point but we are different in a couple ways, the most important is that we are not hand registering names or trying to drop catch names or reserve any expired names for ourselves instead of letting them go to auction, or bidding on our auctions etc to build our domain portfolio, we are buying some existing portfolios and seeking to help liquidity in the market for more businesses / end users to buy good names to use as a their business. We do not bid against anyone or hand register domains.

We also are not prioritizing our own names vs any customer listed domains so the search results are fair for everyone and focused on what we think the end user will purchase from years of data. At the end of the day it does a lot to help domain investors in the long run, we use the same tools customers do which helps us see the issues and get them resolved, we joined the ICA and contribute to them which helps protect Domainers interests legally and we have even more of a reason to help spread the word about how important buying a good premium domain name can be for someone's business on the Aftermarket.

Of course Godaddy want a solid aftermarket, because you control one of the most popular ones in the world. Like you would need to dropcatch when you are one of the biggest registrars in the world and sell peoples expiring domains. Godaddy is a business and you act in Godaddy's interest just as any other business do act in their interest. Godaddy wants domainers to exist because you guys make a profit on them. Doing what you do is just another way to be profitable, its no charity.

Non-functional systems won't help me as a domainer.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Hi @Joe Styler Still more problems with GoDaddy bulk search the past several weeks. About 5% of the time I get this:

If I wait and come back later I'll cut and past the same search list and it works........
Anyone else getting this?

Once in a while I get a blank white screen with an error message. I'll take a screen shot and post it next time it happens.

 

[Cdomains]

I gave up on this late last year when it started having problems. I hoped it would be fixed, but finally stopped using it and have not been back in months.

 

[Joe Styler]

Hi @Joe Styler Still more problems with GoDaddy bulk search the past several weeks. About 5% of the time I get this:
Show attachment 36080
If I wait and come back later I'll cut and past the same search list and it works........
Anyone else getting this?

Once in a while I get a blank white screen with an error message. I'll take a screen shot and post it next time it happens.

Next time it happens send me a pm with the list of names you are trying to check. I know they have done a ton of work on the bulk search tool internally and on the website. I'd like to see how it is breaking.

 

[Electric-Shadow]

I tend to use Namecheap's bulk search tool when I have a lot to look up, namely because I don't trust GD not to sell on search results. The only time I ever use GD's search tool is when I actually go to register a domain, so I've not encountered these problems before.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Hi @Joe Styler Still more problems with GoDaddy bulk search the past several weeks. About 5% of the time I get this:
Show attachment 36080
If I wait and come back later I'll cut and past the same search list and it works........
Anyone else getting this?

Once in a while I get a blank white screen with an error message. I'll take a screen shot and post it next time it happens.

And @Joe Styler here is the error message I sometimes get:

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Another error message:

 

[imadoer]

i been getting the same error for a long time i stopped using godaddy for bulk searches

 

[baseballworld]

I used it more in the past then now but you might want to bring back some $3 and under coupon codes for dot coms that people renewing hundreds of domains a year with you could get a deal on some new names.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

@Joe Styler You said:
I also checked with the team who handles our top accounts, they typically encounter issues in bulk and hear from customers who are impacted. They said their customers are all able to use it with no issues. They suggested you try using a new incognito window in your browser because it may be a caching issue before you start new searches.

I started having the same problem and error message again today Firefox (my default browser) I tried twice and got the same error message. So I switched to FireFox private browsing. Same error message. I went to Chrome. Same error message. Twice. I went to Chrome Incognito mode. Same error message two more times.

As I've said I've gotten this error message when searching 450 domains and when searching for 5 domains. The size doesn't seem to matter

 

[imadoer]

Name bright bulk is so much better for searches u can search up to 5000 names at once they are way more accurate also

 

[hookbox]

Name bright bulk is so much better for searches u can search up to 5000 names at once they are way more accurate also

The Reberry Brothers thank you so much for that. Make sure you register everything you want when you do that check because if you don't, it may end up on HugeDomains for $2,495.

 

[imadoer]

The Reberry Brothers thank you so much for that. Make sure you register everything you want when you do that check because if you don't, it may end up on HugeDomains for $2,495.

interesting... so what bulk tool do you use?

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Another GoDaddy Bulk Search Tool error message.....

 

[Joe Styler]

Thanks for showing that error. I was able to show it to the developers and they said that they had already gotten an alert of the error and are fixing the issue, it should release in the next day or so. There is another issue they are aware of and working on a fix for as well. This would only impact large requests and then only rarely. But they will still address it.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

You're welcome. Glad you can locate and fix the error. Cheers!

 

[Keith DeBoer]

@Joe Styler Still having same problems

 

[Joe Styler]

@Keith DeBoer Sorry was out of the office this week. I sent this over to the developers to look at last week when you posted this and it should be resolved now but let me know if you see it again.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

@Joe Styler I'm still getting error messages about 5% of the time. Some examples:

 

[Joe Styler]

I am out of the office at domainfest asia this week. If you contact support when I am gone they will be able to convey the error to the developers. If not I am happy to send it up when I am back next week.

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Still having problems with error messages including this one:

 

[Keith DeBoer]

Got this one today:

And this one a few weeks ago:

 

[Keith DeBoer]

I stopped using the GD bulk search tool for several months for a variety of reasons mostly unrelated to performance issues.
However, I'm back to using it now and for the past month or more it has been performing flawlessly!

There is one more refinement, @Joe Styler , that I would suggest.

Sometimes I enter a load of domains and click GO. The page the quickly reloads and the search box comes back empty. I've deduced over time that this happens when I accidentally add more than 500 domains in the search box. It would be nice if an error message came up explaining/confirming that the reason for the blank result is XYZ. I assume its due to too many names being added but I don't know for sure and newbies may just think its broken and go elsewhere.

I'm also encouraged by the gradual and increased coordination between the GD and Afternic platforms as well as improvements to the Afternic platform itself. In addition, there have been a recent (and long overdue) improvements on the GD backend making it a bit easier to manage my 2 thousand or so domains. The data still sorts/searches and loads in an excruciatingly slow manner (on both GD and GD auctions) but I'm grateful for the improvements that have been implemented over the past year or so and look forward to continued progress.

Hats off to Joe, for all his hard work!!