GoDaddy auction bots still a thing? Status in Nov, 2025?

[easypeasy]

Hello I'm just now getting into Godaddy auctions. Let's assume I see a low-key under-the-radar domain I want on the expired auctions list with 0 bids...

I read on this forum in older threads about Godaddy auction bots snatching up names at the last moment or driving up the price if they get a bid...

What is the safest strategy currently in November, 2025? Assuming my max bid is let's say $50-$200 range, should I wait until the domain hits closeout and buy it at $50 or should I try to get it cheaper during the auction (bidding at the end)? Are the Godaddy auction bots still a worry?

Any advice appreciated, thanks!

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

Regardless of bots, domains with bids get a lot more attention. People sort by bids, too.

The strategy you might want to consider: set an alarm for 5 minutes before the end time to watch it.

• If it gets a bid, then bid your max proxy bid.
• If it doesn't get a bid, then you could let it end with 0 bids and buy it at the buy now price (close out price).

The latter is first come, first served, so you'll have to be quick to buy it before anyone else.

 

[URL Stream]

If it doesn't get a bid, then you could let it end with 0 bids and buy it at the buy now price (close out price).

How long is it from the auction ending time until the domain gets listed in closeouts?

 

[AEProgram]

1. bots exist but there is no sniping at domain auctions because bids in last 5 minutes ,extends he auction 5 minutes. Bots are also used to exhaust other bidders by placing a minimum bid just to extend the auction.

2. If you plan on waiting for good names to enter the closeouts, make sure you buy using the godaddy api (if they still offer it, this changes). If you don't and someone with the api wants it, they will usually get it before you.

3. If you want a name make up beforehand the maximum you want to pay and that is your max bid. It is best to not add to the bidder number until he last 5 minutes. If you cannot control yourself, this business will max out your credit cards faster than marrying the wrong person.

 

[easypeasy]

Regardless of bots, domains with bids get a lot more attention. People sort by bids, too.

The strategy you might want to consider: set an alarm for 5 minutes before the end time to watch it.

• If it gets a bid, then bid your max proxy bid.
• If it doesn't get a bid, then you could let it end with 0 bids and buy it at the buy now price (close out price).

The latter is first come, first served, so you'll have to be quick to buy it before anyone else.

Yea but are people sorting and looking at auctions with only 1 bid at the last 5 minutes before the auction ends? How do they know that wasn't just a bot bid? 1 bid doesn't exactly say it's a domain of any value... right?

 

[forge]

1 bid doesn't exactly say it's a domain of any value... right?

GD Auctions get so many eyeballs, so a name getting 1 bid is a major outlier, because once that 1 bid comes in, even if the name is not particularly desirable, another bid is almost certain to follow just based on the FOMO factor.

Do bidders otherwise wait till the last 5 minutes? Hell yeah, I do it all the time, if I crave the name.

 

[AEProgram]

Yea but are people sorting and looking at auctions with only 1 bid at the last 5 minutes before the auction ends? How do they know that wasn't just a bot bid? 1 bid doesn't exactly say it's a domain of any value... right?

a bot bid doesn't mean a fake bid. A bot bid is usually a system that was setup by humans to automatically scan for certain names that meet a certain criteria and bid on it. It's like bot trading, a human is still behind it.

 

[easypeasy]

a bot bid doesn't mean a fake bid. A bot bid is usually a system that was setup by humans to automatically scan for certain names that meet a certain criteria and bid on it. It's like bot trading, a human is still behind it.

yes but the bots could be buying mass amount of domains for super cheap in hopes that only a tiny fraction of the domains convert into sales. That would mean it could or could not be valuable at all. If it's multiple humans bidding on a domain it's more obvious that the domain probably has value.

 

[easypeasy]

still wondering if I have to worry about bot bids driving up the price of my domain if I place a bid... nobody knows if this is currently an issue or not?

 

[forge]

Generally speaking, no you shouldn't have to worry (as much).

"driving up the price of my domain" ?
It's not your name until you place the winning bid.

 

[SpareDomains]

I mean there's not much ya can do. If you say it's low-key under-the-radar domain ya want on the expired auctions list with 0 bids wait till ya can't wait anymore and then tell us how your bid goes in the last time of the auction. If someone has a bot loaded up ready to go you won't see this till your bids in. It's a coin toss I've snatched stuff I thought I'd never get away with and other times I've been trampled on domains I thought were nothing special.

 

[AEProgram]

still wondering if I have to worry about bot bids driving up the price of my domain if I place a bid... nobody knows if this is currently an issue or not?

what I found is, that if there are no bids and you bid on a name that is good, others including bots are likely to come and bid too. If you don't bid and wait for closeouts, if it was a good name, you probably won't see it in closeouts because it will get purchased the second it entered closeouts via a bot. If it does go to closeouts and you decide to wait a few days for the closeout price to go lower, you will probably lose it too because the bot might be waiting for it to hit 11 dollars or whatever and in that second using the api it buys it.

If you want to avoid bots and others, only bid on names that are really bad, you won't have any competition.

The same is with names that drop. If the name is any good, it will likely be caught by one of the major catchers and it will go to auction.

There is luck too, but a good way to end up broke is to depend on luck.

 

[forge]

If you want to avoid bots and others, only bid on names that are really bad, you won't have any competition.

Better yet, throw your phone in the toilet and do all your domain acquisitions on a f*cking strawberry Pop-Tart.

 

[AEProgram]

Better yet, throw your phone in the toilet and do all your domain acquisitions on a f*cking strawberry Pop-Tart.

You mean on a Raspberry Pi?

 

[easypeasy]

what I found is, that if there are no bids and you bid on a name that is good, others including bots are likely to come and bid too. If you don't bid and wait for closeouts, if it was a good name, you probably won't see it in closeouts because it will get purchased the second it entered closeouts via a bot. If it does go to closeouts and you decide to wait a few days for the closeout price to go lower, you will probably lose it too because the bot might be waiting for it to hit 11 dollars or whatever and in that second using the api it buys it.

If you want to avoid bots and others, only bid on names that are really bad, you won't have any competition.

The same is with names that drop. If the name is any good, it will likely be caught by one of the major catchers and it will go to auction.

There is luck too, but a good way to end up broke is to depend on luck.

the name I am talking about is not necessarily "good". When I say "low-key and under-the-radar" I mean it's a name that on the surface doesn't look like anything special, but it has value to me for branding reasons. It's a name with a very low valuation from Godaddy and nothing indicating it's valuable. What I'm wondering is that if I bid on it will that ALONE cause bots to also bid on it?

In your post you're saying that bots only bid on domains that are "good"? If that's the case then I will probably be OK bidding on the domain during the auction because I doubt any other human would bid on this domain just because it has 1 bid (but I could be wrong of course).

 

[fka1080405]

The folklore that bids attract bids has become so ingrained that there are a large number of participants who wait until the last 5 minutes to bid... which results in some domains spending 10 days with zero bids and then receiving thousands of dollars in bids at the very end of the auction.

The lack of bids on a domain tells you very little about the potential outcome of the auction. The most reliable way to determine if a domain will attract bids is to look at the GoDaddy estimated value. If a domain's value is over $4,000 then it will almost certainly attract bids.

If the domain's value is under $4,000 then you can do some more digging, using the most popular sources for expired domain name information. For example, right now, there is a lot of auction participation from people buying "SEO domains" and for that a lot of people are using expireddomains.net. So, go to expireddomains.net and look at the GoDaddy Auction listings and sort by "BL" "DP" "ACR" "MMGR" "WPL" and "Traffic". If your domain ranks in the top few pages for any of those numbers, it'll likely attract bids.

I don't believe that bidding early increases the chances of losing the domain to other participants when you're willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a domain. I've won lots of domains for $1 that I have placed early bids on, and I've lost lots of domains that I placed late bids on... after participating in thousands of auctions, I do not believe that waiting until the last 5 minutes has a meaningful impact on the likelihood of winning a domain.

If someone is willing to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a domain then they have reasoning far beyond someone else is bidding hundreds or thousands of dollars. I've experimented with early vs. late bids, for a couple of months I was proxy bidding my maximum the moment a domain became listed and not monitoring the auction at all, and at the moment I'm not using proxy bidding and instead placing bids in the last 5 minutes... I've noticed no difference in the outcome.

The risk I think people miss is that if you forget to bid in the last 5 minutes, or you lose your internet connection or have a problem with your auction account (mine has been locked a few times...) then you could lose the domain forever. Given how many people now wait until the last 5 minutes, you cannot predict a domain will go to closeout just because it doesn't have any bids 6 minutes before the end.

With waiting to the end, you're also much more likely to get swept up in the mania of an auction towards the end, early bidding gives you more time to make reasoned decisions. We've all got carried away in the last 5 minutes of an auction and placed bids we later regret. I've got some thousands-of-dollars domains that I regret because I ended up competing with someone else for a domain I didn't even want that much.

Personally, I believe that if a domain is important to you and you're willing to spend hundreds of dollars on it, then the right strategy is an early proxy bid. If someone outbids you, they were going to outbid you anyway. If you're an investor participating in hundreds or thousands of auctions each month and your goal is to keep the auction price the lowest then it might be justifiable to wait until the last 5 minutes to place your first bid because even if it only helps 1% of the time, that could be a meaningful amount of money saved... but that applies to very few people.

So, my recommendation, and what I do for domains I care about: proxy bid early.

 

[AEProgram]

the name I am talking about is not necessarily "good". When I say "low-key and under-the-radar" I mean it's a name that on the surface doesn't look like anything special, but it has value to me for branding reasons. It's a name with a very low valuation from Godaddy and nothing indicating it's valuable. What I'm wondering is that if I bid on it will that ALONE cause bots to also bid on it?

In your post you're saying that bots only bid on domains that are "good"? If that's the case then I will probably be OK bidding on the domain during the auction because I doubt any other human would bid on this domain just because it has 1 bid (but I could be wrong of course).

Does the name have a history? Backlinks? Active site in the past? Age? There are so many factors the talented bots take into consideration that you might not realize.

Decide you maximum amount. Wait until the last 5 minute and bid that amount. There are bots that likely watch all domains with bids and only then run a check to see if it should bid.

I have seen it all. I had names I thought nobody will want and only meant something to me, just to lose it. I also had names I thought a lot of people will want and nobody else bid.

 

[DN_Hunter]

If nobody bids and it goes to Closeout, then the BIN starts at $50. So if your strategy is to hope nobody bids and wait for it to hit closeout, then you could just make a proxy bid of around $50. You might actually win it for $1 (or somewhere under $50 depending on how many other bidders there are).

For those "meh, maybe it's worth it" domains, I let them go to Closeout, and when it finally hits $5 I might decide to buy it. But by that time you might also be saying I guess I just saved myself some money because nobody wanted it during Closeouts...

 

[CashproofAi]

the name I am talking about is not necessarily "good". When I say "low-key and under-the-radar" I mean it's a name that on the surface doesn't look like anything special, but it has value to me for branding reasons. It's a name with a very low valuation from Godaddy and nothing indicating it's valuable. What I'm wondering is that if I bid on it will that ALONE cause bots to also bid on it?

In your post you're saying that bots only bid on domains that are "good"? If that's the case then I will probably be OK bidding on the domain during the auction because I doubt any other human would bid on this domain just because it has 1 bid (but I could be wrong of course).

Practically there is no good or bad domains. If all expired domains are bad how people are earning millions from expired domains after acquiring them? You are right and go ahead with your own conviction and strategies.

You are an expert already from these words

"good. When I say "low-key and under-the-radar" I mean it's a name that on the surface doesn't look like anything special".

To me the suggestion of "Bravo Mod Team" more useful and logical.

 

[CDM]

"What I'm wondering is that if I bid on it will that ALONE cause bots to also bid on it?"

I believe what you are concerned about and referring to, is the practice that was prevalent beginning around 10 years ago or so wherein Turn Commerce engaged a strategy of using 'bot' bidding to bid on any auction that got a single bid and bid it up to a minimum around $100 regardless of the domain. I don't know the specifics, actually, but at the time it was accepted that this is what was happening. Some domainers tested this by putting in a bid on a garbage name, like EastSideGooberPies4Sale.net and sure enough, the Turn Commerce bot would come 'over the top' of their bid. If you go back into the NP threads of GD auctions from that era, there is a ton of discussion and speculation about what was happening at the time. As I said, at the time, it was generally accepted this is what was happening. I believe the OP here wants to know very simply if this practice is still happening, or not.