HUGE DOMAINS SNIPING GODADDY CLOSEOUTS

[wwwweb]

So annoying Godaddy hasn't stopped Huge Domains from sniping Godaddy Closeouts with their automated tools, no way a human bidder can win a even closeout.

First they were sniping with the backorders, now you cut that out, and you are letting them snipe via automated tools.

So what do you say @Joe Styler , you want to even the playing field a bit, as your partners are bidding everything in a split second, from $12, to $11, and bidding everything else into the hundreds from a simple bid. I would rather pay a Huge Domains surcharge at checkout.


Huge Domains has an unfair advantage on the auction platform, essentially taxing every user for using it with their automated access advantages given to them thru the house.

 

[Daniel Owens]

Was waiting today for following domains to hit the closeout but then the buy now $11 link never appeared. Only the auction-ended notice. I would not mind if it was a fellow domainer with a faster-finger but I am pretty sure it was the bot.

ultraneo.com
greensafari.com

Cant get a domain during the auction coz people and bot will bid it up like crazy and cant get it after the auction coz of the sniping.

Most platforms have made it impossible for a bot to bid, it's just too hard these days. There is a good chance it was someone with a faster finger. Plus most states have outlawed bot-bidding or 'sniping'.

 

[DomainBanana]

Everyone thinks the API is this magic wand, it’s not. You have to compete with every other dev that has API, calls are limited, and so are computing resources.

Okay, then let's go beyond "API". GD should focus on leveling the playing field and making auctions and closeouts fair and accessible to all buyers.

Whether it's the API or macros or other coding used to game the system, GD should step in with aggressive regulation so that HD and others can't get an unfair advantage.

 

[wwwweb]

He may have a lot of accounts for closeouts. 100, 200, 300... All with the same whois. With consolidated billing. And, naturally, each account is limited to publicly announced 60 or so requests per minute.
As a side note, sometimes other bots (owned by various NP members in particular) do either win closeout or at least become 2nd highest bidder in non-closeout auctions. Becoming 2nd highest bidder seems to be their active wish.

The second highest bidder wish list doesn’t really pay off anymore, considering the same frequent bidders are winning the auctions. There was some crazy stuff going on with massive defaults on canna/hemp names which was a lot of non payments. Also like the last big one on user base.com where the end user backed off around $25K.

You can get skinned alive if you don’t know what your doing over there these days, a $12 name nobody wants to touch can be $200 in seconds with a quick bot proxy, and closeouts maybe should be delayed like random times from 30 mins to 2 hours,, based on a random
number timer.

Huge Names has gamed Godaddy, and it’s a win win, so who really cares. Only recourse you have is if you can get thru to new CEO, but whose going to say no to profits, so status quo carries on, and they continue to dominate, and expand their territory online.

 

[wwwweb]

Okay, then let's go beyond "API". GD should focus on leveling the playing field and making auctions and closeouts fair and accessible to all buyers.

Whether it's the API or macros or other coding used to game the system, GD should step in with aggressive regulation so that HD and others can't get an unfair advantage.

Playing fair doesn’t pay the bills, and get you double digit revenue growth.

 

[Recons.Com]

He may have a lot of accounts for closeouts. 100, 200, 300... All with the same whois. With consolidated billing. And, naturally, each account is limited to publicly announced 60 or so requests per minute.
As a side note, sometimes other bots (owned by various NP members in particular) do either win closeout or at least become 2nd highest bidder in non-closeout auctions. Becoming 2nd highest bidder seems to be their active wish.

That 60 might be enough to win a lot of names, if they have speed advantage. Consider that Godaddy for some reason stopped randomizing the time a name would hit closeouts. So, it is either there immediately or not at all. So, if HD fires 3-4 of tries at the right time, or maybe even 1, it wins, so it can win 20-60 names per minute from single account. That is more than enough for the best of the stock for the day that hits there. 20/minute for about 6 hours that the auctions are active, you could stock up 7200 names.

The thing with other auction members is that you see the logic in the bidding. And you see normally 3-4 horse race, because everyone agrees the name is $xxx. When it is HD, though, it is basically everyone has stopped at mid $xx and you are going at it with the bot for up to 12%. That makes it the most unpleasant part of it. I only am in those if I have possible use for myself, but that stupid thing makes me to overpay to the level of "hobbyist", as @Eric Lyon calls that price point ))

 

[DomainBanana]

Playing fair doesn’t pay the bills, and get you double digit revenue growth.

Then maybe ICANN or the FTC needs to step in and regulate domain auctions, just as the drop should be regulated.

 

[wwwweb]

Then maybe ICANN or the FTC needs to step in and regulate domain auctions, just as the drop should be regulated.

Any economy needs regulation to keep opportunities flowing and prevent companies from

ICANN can’t do anything, they are to busy thinking of ways to line their own pockets.

This would make a great article as people love to pound on what they perceive as domain squatting, so you have a company who previously was using the godaddy backorder system as a loop hole to claims the closeouts before they went live, that got exposed, and now they allow the bots to snipe them. The little guy can’t catch a break, albeit this warehouse company has amassed 7 million domains it’ holding hostage for ransom from small business users, fair game as we all know, but Joe Public likes to pound on anyone with more than 10 names. Albeit while artificially creating a supply, and demand issue, and raising the wholesale price of domains at the same time. I mean if this story got told with screenshots of user ids, and scenarios that can be predicted, it would like blow up.

Who wants to buy the TV rights to this movie ?

 

[namesway]

That 60 might be enough to win a lot of names, if they have speed advantage. Consider that Godaddy for some reason stopped randomizing the time a name would hit closeouts. So, it is either there immediately or not at all. So, if HD fires 3-4 of tries at the right time, or maybe even 1, it wins, so it can win 20-60 names per minute from single account. That is more than enough for the best of the stock for the day that hits there. 20/minute for about 6 hours that the auctions are active, you could stock up 7200 names.

The thing with other auction members is that you see the logic in the bidding. And you see normally 3-4 horse race, because everyone agrees the name is $xxx. When it is HD, though, it is basically everyone has stopped at mid $xx and you are going at it with the bot for up to 12%. That makes it the most unpleasant part of it. I only am in those if I have possible use for myself, but that stupid thing makes me to overpay to the level of "hobbyist", as @Eric Lyon calls that price point ))

Don't think they can get that many domains with the 60 requests limit. Not knowing when GoDaddy will move the domain to closeouts is a challenge in itself. It could be in 30s or 4min. If you have API access, you will know that you have to get the price first which means you have to keep sending requests first till you get the price before you can purchase the domain. If they send request for more than one domain, that will count against their limit. What you saying is only possible if they have 100 or more accounts with API access. They will run into 60 wall like everyone else b/c GoDaddy will block their API access for half HR or so. And honestly, it is more of luck than anything else.

 

[meslam479]

Another proposal that most likely will level up the playing field, I have noticed that %80+ of my list that snapped by bots, was available after 30 seconds after the end of the auction, so i believe most successful API bots will delay for 30 seconds after the auction ends then check domain 2 times per second (60times per 30 seconds with in the limit) so if godaddy limits the number of checks to one time per second instead of 60 times per minute it will kill this trick that i believe used by couple of successful bots.

 

[tonyk2000]

if godaddy limits the number of checks to one time per second instead of 60 times per minute it will kill this trick that i believe used by couple of successful bots

why would GD do this, what for? They are happy now... ;-()

 

[DomainBanana]

why would GD do this, what for? They are happy now... ;-()

GD has shown it can't be trusted to self-regulate. We need a higher authority.

 

[DomainVP]

Let’s be real... have you seen most of these closeouts :: people don’t bid on them for a reason.

Other than the closeouts and the API bidding is the $10 backorder on almost all aged DNs that are 5L and less.

The game is cooked boys. Focus on smart acquisitions.

 

[Recons.Com]

Don't think they can get that many domains with the 60 requests limit. Not knowing when GoDaddy will move the domain to closeouts is a challenge in itself. It could be in 30s or 4min. If you have API access, you will know that you have to get the price first which means you have to keep sending requests first till you get the price before you can purchase the domain. If they send request for more than one domain, that will count against their limit. What you saying is only possible if they have 100 or more accounts with API access. They will run into 60 wall like everyone else b/c GoDaddy will block their API access for half HR or so. And honestly, it is more of luck than anything else.

That is the point though. Before, you did not know. Now, the move is INSTANT. So, they can tune the bot to place the bid at the exact second and be the first, as they are in the same building, from what was discussed in the thread. And I don't believe in coincidences in things like this.

 

[kriss05]

Another proposal that most likely will level up the playing field, I have noticed that %80+ of my list that snapped by bots, was available after 30 seconds after the end of the auction, so i believe most successful API bots will delay for 30 seconds after the auction ends then check domain 2 times per second (60times per 30 seconds with in the limit) so if godaddy limits the number of checks to one time per second instead of 60 times per minute it will kill this trick that i believe used by couple of successful bots.

Drop times are indeed not too randomized. It is pretty easy to estimate at which time intervals the probability of domain to hit closeout is much higher than average one.

Those who use web interface should take it into account, as it seems that the number of allowed refreshes/minute is less than number of allowed API calls/minute.

 

[meslam479]

Drop times are indeed not too randomized. It is pretty easy to estimate at which time intervals the probability of domain to hit closeout is much higher than average one.

Those who use web interface should take it into account, as it seems that the number of allowed refreshes/minute is less than number of allowed API calls/minute.

For sure and it get worse when a few users refresh page at the same time, you will notice a huge delay in contrast to API users.

 

[nivadriver]

Just the better ones...

They tend to get the ones with an older reg date. They're not good at futurecasting. Heck, I don't know how good I am, but they don't dabble much in the trends I am working in the closeouts.

 

[nivadriver]

If you take closeouts out of that equation, what is your average price then?

Don't have those numbers ATM, but I buy 90-95% closeouts. Of the names I bid on and lose, HD wins over 50%. I only very rarely buy a name for over 100 bucks at GD these days because of my aversion to the HD whale. I have a sense for where he is (almost everywhere) but there seem to be niches that do not interest the whale.

 

[wwwweb]

Ok, so movie rights sold, make a noise and the huge domains bot will devour you. Not even a mouse click is safe.

 

[markfromslo]

I thought I'd look back at the domains I was outbid on over the last couple weeks. Just about every single one has Huge Domains in there bidding, and mostly winning. Often it is just me and them as the only two bidders. They seem to like the names I like (and others don't), which makes it really a pisser for me.

The fact that there aren't more bidders in the auctions and aren't more others outbidding Huge Domains, tells me the domain market is WEAK. At this point, unless I really, really want a name and outbid HD, I'm just waiting for the ones that I like and they miss, and picking them up for $5 - $11.

Let HD pay millions or tens of millions each year on the names. They'll be left holding the bag and the domain investment business gets slower and slower.

 

[markfromslo]

This is interesting: I made an embarrassing mistake today. I bought futurenglish.com. I didn't notice that the name is missing a second E. Damn it. $127 wasted.

But here's what's interesting. Huge Domains was the other bidder that ran the name up to this level, with their one and only bid at $124. Why would a sophisticated bot not notice that this name is not made up of two whole words? What made HD buy it? Was it an algorithm? Was it a human who made the same mistake as me? Obviously it's worth anything. Very strange.