registrars NameJet Removes Bid Indicators Lower Than 4

[News]

NameJet.com has always displayed the amount of pre-order bids “Bidders” on PendingDelete domain names, which has been used by domain name investors as an easy tool to find domains they may have missed otherwise, so they can place a backorder on the domain.

Well, the easy part just got a bit harder. NameJet is no longer showing “bidders” below 4. So all pendingdelete domain names that have a minimum of 1-3 backorders will not show publicly on the NameJet site that they have any pre-drop bidders.

On the other side of the fence, many people will like the fact that the 1-3 bidders amount has been removed, because it will help them personally in the drop game. This will take “highlights” off many domain names that others wouldn’t see with the handouts NameJet was providing prior and will help others at the game of dropcatching.

Source

 

[ResoluteDomains]

So thats what happened to me the other day! Oh well. Thanks for sharing this!

 

[The New Guy]

Good news for the small time buyer who does their own research.

 

[silentg]

No official word from NametJet so far. This might be a bug or something. Their pending delete e-mail list has been messed up for the past couple of days.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

No official word from NametJet so far. This might be a bug or something. Their pending delete e-mail list has been messed up for the past couple of days.

Maybe that explains a name that I bid on which I didnt see any other bidders, but got an email that I didnt catch the domain however it was registered for the past two days to [email protected] with the registrant (first and last) name "TBD ENOM CUSTOMER" at Name Nelly Corporation. Today its in privacy. But right up until 20 minutes before I could place a bid it had zero bidders. I have never seen this before.

 

[Arca]

Great news! Hope this change is here to stay. Will benefit domainers who put in the time to find less obvious domains that others don't take notice of.

 

[campout]

It seems misleading if they are still displaying a "0" under the Bidders column.

 

[kawalsukhi]

Quite misleading!!

 

[campout]

This article may not be right. I see a domain with 3 bidders on it right now at NJ.

 

[FPForum]

It wouldn't make much sense..why hide the number of bidders if it's only 2 or 3? Shouldn't it be opposite, and hide all names 4+ bids? Those are obviously the best of the bunch anyways, lol.

 

[campout]

I think they're only hiding 1-2 bids, not 3. I like it -- there's a real disincentive to bid if you find a hidden gem. Or at least, it makes you wait til the last second which is annoying. But of course you don't know if there are already 2 bids now, and your (3rd) bid will all of a sudden start to alert people to the idea.

 

[Arca]

It wouldn't make much sense..why hide the number of bidders if it's only 2 or 3? Shouldn't it be opposite, and hide all names 4+ bids? Those are obviously the best of the bunch anyways, lol.

As Matt Overman was quoted as saying: It was a conscious choice to improve catch rate for the less sought after names.. If people see that there are already 2 bids on a name, it will catch their attention, and other people will look more into the name or simply backorder it because they see that it has value to others. Just like dropcatch.com's public auctions alerts more people of dropping names that they otherwise might not have know of. If more people start going after a name, they will also backorder it at other services, and decrease NJ's chance of grabbing it. But if these less sought after names only get 1-2 backorders at NJ and otherwise fly under the radar, these should be easy catches for NJ.

Yesterday I saw a one word dot com related to a niche I know well. I was really surprised to see that there were no bidders on it, but I guess people not familiar with the niche wouldn't recognize its value at first. When I clicked the name, it showed that it had a backorder already. I placed a backorder as well, and in the search results page it still shows as "0" bidders. Nobody else placed a bid. I think getting these less obvious names will be easier for domainers "in the know" since others would not be able to spot these names with the help of other people's bids.

It might be misleading, but they are misleading to the benefit of the domainer/s who placed a backorder. I'd much rather they move in this direction, than do like dropcatch.com (which obviously does not try to benefit the domainer who places a backorder with them).

 

[hookbox]

Since they run the system they already know how they can manipulate the system. Every name that gets 1 or 2 bids on their system that they think has value to others will now get a fake bid by Namejet so others will see it. Even though other bidders can't see the bids, the house can and because of that the system is easily manipulated. You don't think Namejet employees look at every single name to see what has value and what doesn't. Come on.

 

[Arca]

It’s Official: NameJet Will Only Report Pending Delete Domains With 3 Or More Bidders

Jonathan Tenenbaum, the General Manager of NameJet told thedomains.com

“We instituted this change to benefit our customers. While displaying the backorder information provides some insight into which domains have traction and this leads to more backorders on those names, it also frustrates customers who spend a good amount of time finding hidden gems in the drop. This also allows other aftermarket platforms to target these same domains. So we wanted to try to better safeguard our customers’ efforts in order to provide them with better results and an overall better experience. So far we have been happy with the impact and we will continue to evaluate and adjust things as needed.”

link

 

[NameYourself]

This is good news and will prevent alot of piggy-backing on other people's research. Although the bottom line is likely the primary reason for making the change (as they still seem to show 1 or 2 bids for prerelease domains where they don't need to compete like drop-catching).

It will certainly make a lot of people happy in knowing their drop backorders won't be copied by others since at least 3 others will already have to desire the same name for it to show up. I always had to wait until the last minute to put in backorder bids there because people would copy many of the names they saw with 1 or more bids at namejet and just backorder them elsewhere. This was quite obvious when you see you are the only bidder at namejet (even just at the last minute) and then watch it go to snap or somewhere else that costs even more to backorder in the first place and you see at least a few people put it in there (not always because but very likely after they saw it received a bid at namejet). I always suspected there were a few out there who would somehow scrape all the namejet data during the last minute when most of the 1-2 bid names showed up. That might sound crazy but it certainly would have been an easy thing for someone to do as it only required bringing up several pages.

On a positive note, many more people will feel comfortable placing those bids early now and not having to wait till the last minute (which sometimes because of lag time might not have even gone through). They've done the research, and I'm sure in the end they see a positive effect on the bottom line. Privacy to names with only 1-2 bids is a bonus to those who don't like piggy backers. The social loafers of the bunch will be the ones unhappy here. The standout gems will always be obvious, whether bids shown or not. This protects the harder stuff, the niche stuff that one must put in manual time, effort, and resources to locate, or which may be an end-user themselves only wanting a name.

 

[yogiDomain]

Yes it is official..and this started from this week it self.. good move.. a great advantage to domainer who do research and buy domains..
thanks Namejet

 

[muttus]

Great move which can actually makes economic sense for Namejet. By hiding low bid numbers it will encourage people to bid earlier and also hence create possibly higher competition. Unless I really wanted the name (willing to pay more then 100$) I stayed away from names which were already having some bids since I knew that there will be competition increasing the price.

 

[NameYourself]

Related note, I don't believe any other places (major drop catchers) publish their bid data correct? If any of them started doing so, then this could change again.

Agree it makes sense financially for namejet, which is a big part of why they did it. And from my experience, when I was the only bidder for a name I noticed a much lower chance of catching the name both at snapnames and at namejet. I believe they pool more of their resources into the names with multiple bids first as ones with only a single bidder have no chance of achieving anything higher than the minimum.