discuss I never 'favourite' domains on backorder/auction websites. Do you?

[MadAboutDomains]

I'm wondering if anyone has the same tactics as me when it comes to domain auctions...

I'll be scrolling domain name auctions and I will see a name I like the look of. I will remember it and I'll only glance at the end time and the price and swiftly carry on scrolling.

I avoid clicking the domain (to see the details) if I can and I under no circumstances would I 'favourite' or '' a domain.

I just don't want to give the algorithms that these platforms may use any cause to believe that a domain is going to be popular, because I believe that they will promote it to others more as a result - thus turning my time and effort into their own gain and use it against me.

Surely they'll use the information about how many clicks, how many favourites, maybe even a heat map of when someone stops scrolling over a particular set of domains or where their cursor goes in order to weed out the good names from the bad ones.

Am I alone in this or am I just being a conspiracy theorist by believing that the backorder services or auction/drop websites will use any signals that they can get their hands on in order to get more eyes on the good names?

The same goes for any website that provides a service like domain 'drop date calculators'. I assume that they are using the information for their own personal gain.

 

[capybara]

Ain't that obvious to everyone? As well is, if you hope for HD to drop certain domain, never visit and never whois it.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Ain't that obvious to everyone? As well is, if you hope for HD to drop certain domain, never visit and never whois it.

Interesting, so do you even draw the line at using WHOIS? Even if it's straight to the WHOIS servers like through a command line script?

Do you think that they record the WHOIS lookups and reveal the data to registrars?

 

[pb]

Ain't that obvious to everyone? As well is, if you hope for HD to drop certain domain, never visit and never whois it.

How do you know it's theirs of you never visited it and never checked the whois?

 

[capybara]

Do you think that they record the WHOIS lookups and reveal the data to registrars?

Epik & GoDaddy show whois check count for domains, so any registrar has (or can have) this info for their domains. I'm pretty sure HD tracks that too.

How do you know it's theirs of you never visited it and never checked the whois?

Of course I mean doing it only once, not to let their algorithms know you're interested.

 

[MadAboutDomains]

Epik & GoDaddy show whois check count for domains, so any registrar has (or can have) this info for their domains. I'm pretty sure HD tracks that too.

Ahh yes, you're quite right that they do. Worth nothing that those counts are probably a count from the registrar's own WHOIS tools and won't be from the registries themselves.

I personally don't think that querying a domain via real WHOIS does lead to much of an adverse effect. Would really be interesting to hear thoughts on the contrary if it's true that it does.

 

[branding]

Ahh yes, you're quite right that they do. Worth nothing that those counts are probably a count from the registrar's own WHOIS tools and won't be from the registries themselves.

I personally don't think that querying a domain via real WHOIS does lead to much of an adverse effect. Would really be interesting to hear thoughts on the contrary if it's true that it does.

It differs per TLD. Dot com utilizes a thin whois model where a 2 step lookup is needed to get all domain registration data. A direct query to the registry will not trigger a 'count' at the registrar.

In short, the registry provides data regarding the registration and attached registrar (step1),the registrar provides information regarding the registrant (step2).

99.99% of online search sites (at registrars etc) are coded to retrieve all data therefore trigger the 'lookup counter' by using a 2 step search.

Compare the data retrieved when you do a direct search in your CLI and the data retrieved by (for instance) whois.com/whois. The latter will provide you with more data.