GoDaddy Auctions - Sold history?

[NameYourself]

Is there any place or places that offer complete history of recently sold names at GoDaddy auctions? I see that places like namebio and dnpric.es have only partial history of some auctions. I'm guessing this would need to be provided by godaddy themselves to ultimately list all names, even ones that sold at $10 bargain bins?

 

[NameYourself]

Anyone have any input on this?

 

[DanSanchez]

Godaddy used to leave the domains that sold on your watchlist, but swiftly removed it after realizing that owners were just keeping an eye on their own domains. Other than that, I can't recall ever seeing a complete list of sold domains.

I think it would be a monumental list, if it were ever published though.

 

[Michael M]

Godaddy does not provide this. Only sales of $100 and above are recorded at NameBio.

A program can be written to grab all the sales (I have one I never finished but it worked, and I believe I have seen one other member here recording godaddy sales) - But that is about the only way to do it.

 

[DNVantage]

removed it after realizing that owners were just keeping an eye on their own domains.

Maybe few owners would use this info to get the name value, but overall, it would help dn marketplaces have better sales.

(I have one I never finished but it worked, and I believe I have seen one other member here recording godaddy sales)

Is it open source? maybe someone will pick it up

Is there an GD API for getting this data? How do other sites/scripts do it?

 

[Michael M]

Is it open source? maybe someone will pick it up

Is there an GD API for getting this data? How do other sites/scripts do it?

Currently it is just a piece of code among thousands sitting on my PC unfinished. I am currently going to keep it closed source as I have debated the possibility of creating a sales data aggregation site that gathers data from unreported sources. Plus it is also bundled with other data aggregation code.

I am pretty sure there is a GD API, though I do not use it (mine is based off a web scraping method). I had saw a mention to it in something I read before.

I am not sure of their APIs capabilities, but I imagine it should have all the function one would need to track sales - as it is meant to aid buyers in automated purchasing. I believe you only need to request access from support to get it. If I ever have any free time I am curious to look into their API as well.

 

[Michael]

We record all of GoDaddy's expired auctions including sales under $100, we just don't load sales under $100 into the live site at the moment because there are a *lot* of them. We're strongly considering doing that though, so far the feedback has been pretty clear that people want to see the data.

Their API doesn't give you a complete list of current auctions, it only allows you to see the auctions that match a keyword you specify. Of course there are other functions for placing bids, seeing what you've bid on, what you've won, what you lost after bidding on, and things of that nature.

I haven't tried doing an API search with a blank keyword and seeing if it returns everything, but there would be no point anyway. The response doesn't return whether or not there is a reserve and if it is met, so you'd end up recording a bunch of "sales" that were actually "Reserve Not Met".

GoDaddy doesn't provide the info to anyone and I don't see that happening any time soon, if ever.

 

[Michael M]

We record all of GoDaddy's expired auctions including sales under $100, we just don't load sales under $100 into the live site at the moment because there are a *lot* of them. We're strongly considering doing that though, so far the feedback has been pretty clear that people want to see the data.

I might would suggest a NameBio "Reseller" sales data page which is kept separate from the main NameBio site for sales under $100?

I definitely think it would be great for the average domainer to have access to the sales figures below $100 without having programming knowledge - but I personally would not like to see it blended with current NameBio results as it would be way too much data. (Though one could just filter to $100 and above to see the results as they are now. So maybe just a default min filter of $100, but one could change it?)

Good to know you are already storing that data so if you ever decide to flip that switch you will have a history built up.

Keep up the good work @Michael !

Thanks,
Michael M

 

[Michael M]

Their API doesn't give you a complete list of current auctions, it only allows you to see the auctions that match a keyword you specify. Of course there are other functions for placing bids, seeing what you've bid on, what you've won, what you lost after bidding on, and things of that nature.

I haven't tried doing an API search with a blank keyword and seeing if it returns everything, but there would be no point anyway. The response doesn't return whether or not there is a reserve and if it is met, so you'd end up recording a bunch of "sales" that were actually "Reserve Not Met".

I come from old school before APIs were openly available on the web - so web scraping was a natural way to compile some data I was going for...

But there are advantages to scraping... Using this method I can have the bot choose "More bids" than 0 with a blank keyword on the criteria page - and there's that beautiful data. (including reserve not met) - Refresh and repeat. :D But as I said I haven't had time or real need to look into their API - which would make more sense if it has the right options.

Does the API have the option to specify a # of bids parameter?

 

[Michael]

Thanks for the kind words! Yea, it would definitely cause a lot of clutter, right now we're adding 200-400 sales per day, and if we added sales under $100 it would be closer to 1,000+ per day. If we do it we'll definitely set the default min price to $100 so only people who change the min price will see it, and most likely exclude them from the Daily Market Report articles.

I think we would also not auto-categorize the domains since that would add to the resources and cost of the daily import. Most of the sub $100 sales of interest are short domains in alt extensions or numeric domains anyway so wouldn't have a category of good-fit. It's going to throw off the average price in the graph on the home page too, because in previous years we weren't tracking sales as efficiently and didn't have so many low dollar records. It'll make it look like the market tanked last year when it was pure fire.

Their API does have one method where you can specify to only return listings that have bids (or not), but it still doesn't tell you if the reserve is met. I don't have much experience with their API though as we don't use it. Flippa is the only one we use an API for, and that's only because their main site uses their API, so if you scrape it that's what you'll end up doing anyway.

 

[Michael M]

I think we would also not auto-categorize the domains since that would add to the resources and cost of the daily import. Most of the sub $100 sales of interest are short domains in alt extensions or numeric domains anyway so wouldn't have a category of good-fit. It's going to throw off the average price in the graph on the home page too, because in previous years we weren't tracking sales as efficiently and didn't have so many low dollar records. It'll make it look like the market tanked last year when it was pure fire.

I think if I were in your shoes I would spawn the same code your main site uses under a new folder on namebio (such as /reseller or /under100) and have it hardcoded to have the price filter at 1 to 99. It then could provide it's own charts and not interfere with your main site.

You could start the charting only at the point that you have good data so it does not represent the market incorrectly. Then on the main code just make one small change that the min price for all data retrieved is $100 or above. (I imagine if the data is already there - then this code is probably already there and no change would be needed to the main site)

I definitely do not see a need in spending the resources to categorizing the sales under $100 - except I would like to see your filtering (pattern) system still working for them.

 

[Michael]

Yea, the patterns would still work even if we don't categorize the low-dollar sales, pattern matches are determined on the fly and not stored in the database. Had to do it that way so people could invent their own patterns that we might not have even thought of ("DDNEE" like 44200.com for example). It would just be the Category and Subcategory drop-downs that wouldn't result in any sales under $100.

That's not a bad idea to put them in a separate database table and have a separate page to search for the low dollar sales. That would take care of my two main concerns, which is the speed of searches and keeping the data useful for the majority (low clutter, reasonable averages).

Another minor concern I had is that domain investors might start getting $12 comps thrown at them from potential buyers and get mad at us. With that many records it'll become pretty trivial to find a cheap sale matching practically any keyword.

I'll give it some more thought. Not in a huge rush to do this because there hasn't been a lot of requests for it, I want to make sure we take it in the right direction and that it doesn't negatively impact most users.

Thanks for your feedback and helping me think through this.

 

[DNVantage]

there hasn't been a lot of requests for it

+1 request

Till then, how about putting weekly updated raw file of sub $100 on github and a download link on your site?

 

[martworld]

there hasn't been a lot of requests for it.
.

+1 Request too.

 

[DomainMagnate]

We record all of GoDaddy's expired auctions including sales under $100, we just don't load sales under $100 into the live site at the moment because there are a *lot* of them. We're strongly considering doing that though, so far the feedback has been pretty clear that people want to see the data.

Their API doesn't give you a complete list of current auctions, it only allows you to see the auctions that match a keyword you specify. Of course there are other functions for placing bids, seeing what you've bid on, what you've won, what you lost after bidding on, and things of that nature.

can you get access to older, historical Godaddy sales data this way? I'm curious if historical sales data is available anywhere for download from godaddy/namejet or the other popular auction services

 

[Michael]

Apparently you don't post some names above $100 either. No offense, but you/Namebio miss a lot of names from Godaddy AND other vendors above $100 in xxx and even x,xxx ranges. So I can't see you guys getting this done right. Dnpric.es is still a better option then Namebio for various ranges.

Don't worry, you said "no offense" so I'm totally not offended by your vague and incorrect statements that attempt to make us look bad, and you saying you don't think we can get it done right. Yesterday DNPrices added 99 sales for $80k, we added 288 sales for $299k... need I say more? If we added sales under $100 like they do we would be adding 1,000+ sales per day. We track 11 venues daily, and for eight of them we literally get every single sale they have.

Then there's GoDaddy where we only track the expired auctions and don't miss any of them at all, they don't have many public auctions compared to the expired ones.

We miss a few at NameJet but that is inevitable because you have to place a back order to watch the auction. We back order everything that has 5+ bidders within a few minutes of the deadline which is in excess of 50,000 back orders per year. Then at the end of the month we get a spreadsheet from NJ, but that only adds a couple of sales, if any, because we catch 99% of them on the first pass. Finally there's Sedo, which we only track from their recent sales feed and their weekly spreadsheets.

But for 4.CN, Bido, BuyDomains, DropCatch, Fabulous, Flippa, Park.io, and Pheenix we don't miss anything at all. So I'm not sure where you get off saying that we miss a lot of sales.

 

[Michael M]

No system is 100% accurate, no matter what anyone says. And Michael also clearly showed that yesterday DNprices missed a bunch of sales that NameBio grabbed. So DNPrices must be an awful service that cant but trusted and must be called out according to your line of thinking.

In the end - use your own brain - and multiple sources when looking to make a monetary decision. (researching domain purchases)

But NameBio is a great source that is pretty accurate from my point of view, so no reason to bash it because you seem to have some bias towards only using DNPrices. I personally use both, but prefer NameBio for it's interface and options.

 

[Michael]

Really Michael/Namebio? MixVR.com sold for $750 a few weeks ago via Pheenix platform. It's on Dnpric.es it is NOT on Namebio. I emailed you with the correct information WITH proof of purchase. You were responding to my emails until I sent proof you were wrong. You told me it sold for $85. That's what you were seeing on your end. Then I sent you a few more asking if the site was going to be updated or is something wrong with the entire Namebio system... again ignored and no change. So no need misinforming people on the accuracy of namebio.
I have another domain purchased in 2009 via Sedo for $3801 OpenNetwork.com. It's on Dnpric.es but NOT on Namebio. That's just 2 of many more. That's just my portfolio. In the VR thread alone there has been a number of non-private sales that Namebio missed. So your "We don't miss anything AT ALL" is clearly a flawed statement". But I'll start another thread dedicated to Namebio as not to take away from OP.

We had a four day period from March 1st to March 4th where Pheenix auctions weren't being tracked because they changed the URL of the auction results file and I didn't notice. It used to have /backorders2/ and then it had /backorders3/. All the prices for auctions running during that time got frozen in place.

So on March 1st the auction for your VR domain was at $85, then they changed the URL and the price was frozen there as our software wasn't getting updates any more. I wiped out all the sales records we had during this period for Pheenix because they were incorrect. When I emailed you I hadn't noticed that the results for the 4th were messed up too.

I'm not misinforming people, you just harp on one example where Pheenix glitched out for a few days almost a month ago. You literally have no idea what you're talking about, while on the other hand I wrote the code. Look at Pheenix's auction list:

https://www.pheenix.com/backorders3/auctions_js.php?action=download_auctions&type=text&public=1

You can't track one auction without tracking every single one. As long is that file is where it is expected to be there won't be an issue and EVERY SINGLE RESULT will be recorded. I have since updated the code to scrape and grab the URL on the fly instead of assuming it won't change. So yes, we are literally grabbing every single Pheenix auction.

Same goes for all the other venues I mentioned, you can't track one without tracking them all because they're all in the same place/file and don't require placing back orders or anything like that.

Regarding your other example from Sedo from 7 years ago, I can't speak to that because I've only been with NameBio since the start of 2015. They didn't used to be great about importing the Sedo reports. But if you can't come up with anything since I started, which you can't because I NEVER forget to import a Sedo report, then you should probably chill out and move on.

 

[Michael]

Also this was the entirety of your email, and you never responded to my reply, and you never sent me any kind of proof. You must be imagining things.

---

Hey Namebio! I wanted to report a purchase to be added to the site. I won the domain MixVR.com in auction via Pheenix.com on March 4, 2016. Please let me know if you need anything from me. Thank you for such a great resource!

James

 

[BostonDomainer]

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[BostonDomainer]

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[Michael]

I do appreciate getting a meaningful explanation at this point. I'll "chill out" now as you say. I just have a question while I have your ears. Can you comment on whether the system will be updated with the final sales prices of names sold, like MixVR, in that time period if proof of sale or purchase is presented?

I said chill out because you were going to go start a thread about us, that's all. I'm happy to add sales to the database manually if people can provide screenshots of proof. I got about five emails from that VR thread because someone suggested emailing us, and all but one responded back with proof.

Yours was an unusual situation because I didn't realize that the time that Pheenix results on the 4th were messed up, and you didn't say in your email what the price was, so I thought it was $85 and responded back that we don't track sales under $100. That would have been a good time to say "hey, that price is way off, here's a screenshot." If you still want to email me I'll be glad to add it.

I can't speak to the VR sales that are being reported in that thread as I don't have time to read it. But again, I 100% stand by what I said about catching everything at those eight venues. Maybe they happened on Sedo auctions or GoDaddy public auctions which we don't track? I don't go through the forums seeing what sales people are reporting and try to add them to NameBio, that's too much effort for the volume of sales it would add, but again, I'm always happy to add a sale if someone emails me.

 

[Michael]

...

 

[DomainMagnate]

https://www.pheenix.com/backorders3/auctions_js.php?action=download_auctions&type=text&public=1

You can't track one auction without tracking every single one. As long is that file is where it is expected to be there won't be an issue and EVERY SINGLE RESULT will be recorded. I have since updated the code to scrape and grab the URL on the fly instead of assuming it won't change. So yes, we are literally grabbing every single Pheenix auction.

Same goes for all the other venues I mentioned, you can't track one without tracking them all because they're all in the same place/file and don't require placing back orders or anything like that.

Michael, I'm just curious what you mean exactly, as that list just shows current prices for running auctions, it doesn't show completed auctions results, so it looks strange that you'd be able to get All auction results this way. Once auctions are completed they are removed from there. You can't really know when it's completed either, as it can be extended etc.

 

[Michael]

Michael, I'm just curious what you mean exactly, as that list just shows current prices for running auctions, it doesn't show completed auctions results, so it looks strange that you'd be able to get All auction results this way. Once auctions are completed they are removed from there. You can't really know when it's completed either, as it can be extended etc.

Good question. Here's basically how it works:

1. Grab the auction list every X seconds.
2. Go through each domain in the list.
3. Delete the domain from the database.
4. Add the domain at the current price.

When the auction is over the domain is no longer in the list, so you won't be able to delete it any more or add it back in. That means it is frozen at whatever the last price was before it disappeared from the list. The absence of the domain tells you the auction is completed.

Of course when the entire list disappears because the URL changed, it looks like every auction completed simultaneously