registrars New display on GoDaddy when searching for names that are in Afternic

[campout]

It looks like GoDaddy has rolled out a new display when you search for names in their search bar. I think it only applies to names that are in Afternic, and maybe GD Premium.

I think I like it. They're trying to sell the name by quoting their own estimated value and making some automated points about the name on the right.

They should be able to tell real quick if it's helping or hurting sales rate.

 

[Joe Styler]

As a side note, I like the youtube video ("What are premium domains?"). I am developing own-hosted forsale pages, Joe can you check please is it OK to use this video if the domain landing page is about GD/Afternic listed domain with BIN and is sending the user to either system (GD home page, GD buynow auction, Afternic listing)?
Cc @Joe Styler

I don't know the answer to that. It should be on YouTube we publish most of our videos there as well, I am not super familiar with their terms of service. You would be best off emailing our legal team or YouTube. Our legal team contact is on the bottom of our home page under the legal link.

 

[Acroplex]

Seeded by "AI" or not, such valuations have no place in a marketplace. It's one thing to list BIN prices the seller defined, and another to formulate a value per your "AI" - incidentally, past sales do not indicate a domain's value.

So-called "comps" are cheap alternatives to a methodology that involves manual examination of many parameters to define domain value.

Until you have a GoDaddy specialist churning out numbers by hand, you will be off by a wide margin.

 

[Acroplex]

Imagine a car dealership that when queried for car prices, lists inventory of cars individual sellers are selling, with its own suggested price - using an arbitrary algorithm.

I might want to sell my Impala based on its intrinsic characteristics and features, not based on the way other cars sold in the past, and definitely not based on what a dealership dictates.

I'm sorry, but I don't think you realize the amount of frustration you've generated among domain portfolio owners.

 

[Joe Styler]

Seeded by "AI" or not, such valuations have no place in a marketplace. It's one thing to list BIN prices the seller defined, and another to formulate a value per your "AI" - incidentally, past sales do not indicate a domain's value.

So-called "comps" are cheap alternatives to a methodology that involves manual examination of many parameters to define domain value.

Until you have a GoDaddy specialist churning out numbers by hand, you will be off by a wide margin.

I appreciate your points. I don't think a manual appraisal would help in most cases. Domains are unique and the owner is going to have a value in their mind - if the appraisal agrees with it great if not then it would be wrong to the domain owner. I don't really think that matters much, what matters is what the domain will sell for and the only way to truly arrive at that is for the buyer and seller to agree on the price and the buyer to complete payment. That agreed price can fluctuate depending on various factors. Market trends, crypto now - short numeric last year etc, personal financial situation, divorce, etc etc.
At the end of the day the sale price is really only what a buyer and seller agree to.
An appraisal like anything else besides the sale itself is a tool. Ours shows what most domain names with similar keywords are selling for using private GoDaddy sales data and any public sales data we can grab, i.e. millions and millions of sales. You can like the tool or not like the tool I don't have a problem with that and understand the concerns here by everyone. We think using the tool will increase sales for everyone. If it doesn't we all lose money and no one likes that You can certainly disagree with it and not show your names for sale with us, but I would encourage anyone to try a test first. See what the sales results are, maybe split your list of for sale names and see which group gets more results etc. We're not set in stone on this and the results have changed already since this thread began. We will test more and different ways all with the goal of helping to sell more names at the end of the day.

 

[SuperBrander]

@Acroplex I agree that most AI valuations will usually be off by a wide margin. Especially for higher end names because a system can't really predict these sales based on stats. For example, MyWorld.com's sale for 1.2M. I'm presuming that Godaddy's engine would have given it 5 figures at best and I'm probably being generous. No 'My'+'Word' or 'Word'+'World' past sale can predict the price. Same goes for CryptoWorld for 200K and so many others in 5 and 6 figures.

Personally I would also prefer not to have the valuation if there's no clear explanation on the actual page about it being a guideline only. Not under a '?' people might or might not click on- but right next to the vaulation where potential buyers can see it. I do think the valuation could benefit cheap domains and I'm for anything that helps educate buyers. Since it looks like this valuation engine will stay as long as Godaddy thinks it helps sales... then I hope they'll at least put the disclaimer on the actual page so potential buyers will understand that ultimately- if you want to buy something, you have to agree on a price with the seller, not with an AI that tries to guess the price it should be sold for.

 

[tonyk2000]

I'm sorry, but I don't think you realize the amount of frustration you've generated among domain portfolio owners.

Indeed, I still disagree with the sales method where 2 different prices / valuations are shown. Assuming that todays behavior (not to show lower appraised values) is not specific to the IP/browser I noticed it from, and assuming that it will stay, it would be useful to see real results of the experiment. What if we see an increase in sales? In this case, I would be happy to transfer more BIN domains to GD/Afternic channel exactly for this purpose, let them show what a deal the buyer is receiving with a higher appraised value. This would open a question how to retreive "appraisal" values in bulk, as I would need to see if the domain is "appraised" with a higher value, but it is too early to ask this question now.

 

[Acroplex]

Explicit valuations, e.g. this type of domain MSRP price tag, won't be generating more sales, when the price range is above a few hundred bucks.

You might disagree, but since many domains sell in the 4/5 figure range, your tool better be exceptionally accurate.

I foresee an increase in inquiries that a) fail to understand why their offer got rejected and b) come back with an attitude that would hurt both the seller and GoDaddy ("but you said this domain was $400...")

 

[Tunababa8v]

With this action taken by GoDaddy, I think the saying '' a domain is only worth what an enduser is willing to pay'' is now obscure..

There are different factors that makes a domain unique and those factors directly influence what the buyer is willing to pay for a particular domain and at what price the seller is willing to let it go. The most important of these factors is the human factor, either the empathy of the seller or the buyer, how deep the buyer's pocket is or how cash strapped the seller is. No matter what AI can never measure that and should not be ultimate ground on which domains are appraised.
Give the buyer and the seller the right to haggle on it. Afterall, no matter how shiny you want it to be, you are still an after'MARKET'. You do not fix price for a buyer and seller in a market. It is their job and each haggle prices base on individual discretion..

 

[ulasbbtr]

@Joe Styler Are you going to change the order of premium listings at related searchs? Before new tld flood it was second or third, now one premium listing is placed at the very bottom. This change drastically reduced the sale of premium listings. I don't know how it affected the sale of other tlds and changed things more profitable for Godaddy or not but it was a huge blow for premium listings.

 

[Kuffy]

They are still offering my names for sale without authorisation, or the ability to deliver.

Before bidding or paying for a name, you should check with the registrant to see if GoDaddy/AfterNick has the ability to sell it. SimplyPho.com is not for sale btw.

 

[Michael M]

They are still offering my names for sale without authorisation, or the ability to deliver.

Before bidding or paying for a name, you should check with the registrant to see if GoDaddy/AfterNick has the ability to sell it. SimplyPho.com is not for sale btw.

@Kuffy - I have seen you post a few times about this.

Why not setup an account at Afternic, add this name to you account, and then turn the "hidden" option on.

After the name gets reviewed and approved in your account - this should prevent the other user from listing on Afternic in the future.

 

[Kuffy]

@Kuffy - I have seen you post a few times about this.
Why not setup an account at Afternic, add this name to you account, and then turn the "hidden" option on.
After the name gets reviewed and approved in your account - this should prevent the other user from listing on Afternic in the future.

Thanks for your reply, and this is one option that would be sensible if one was dealing with a conventional organisation. However, I have seen so many critical posts about Godaddy, and Afternic, that I don't want to have anything to do with them. I am also concerned about the fast transfer option that they offer. If I have an account with them, and the name is listed in this account, then I feel that there is a possiblity that they will sell the name and remove it. If I don't have an account with them, then this would be theft, and I assume that it would be a straightforward matter to recover the name.

I am sorry that I have posted about these names several times,bit I had hoped that I could get an explanation for these listings from GD/Afternic. I think it is worrying that they have not bothered to repond, and it leads me to believe that there is more to this than a simple mistake. Name Silo was into one of the threads like a terrier after a rat, and this is the response I would expect from an honest and respectable business. Perhaps @Joe Styler could comment and give some clarification as to why they do not verify names listed for fast transfer.

I registered the name NoAfternic.com in the hope that it will help me to avoid having to check for unauthorised names on their sites. It's a fairly extreme measure, and one that I undertook with reluctance.

 

[Premiums]

@Kuffy , Afternic is a trademarked term

 

[capiche]

@Joe Styler

I recently had an auction close, and noticed that the estimated appraisal wasn't listed in the auction details for the domain, but if someone were to do a search for the domain on the Godaddy homepage, it was there.

This is no good. Godaddy should create a way for domainers to opt out of their "estimated appraisals" if they choose to.

You're going to lose a lot of customers, both on your auction platform and in general.

 

[Michael M]

@Joe Styler - I think it would be recommendable to add an option inside of Afternic to disable the appraisal either at the seller or domain level.

This should solve all problems people may have... I don't mind it much, but there are definitely some of my names that I would prefer to not have the valuation information on the right side as it does not agree with my asking price and could confuse buyers on these names.

(I know updates at afternic are a slow, but I think this is needed)

 

[Kuffy]

@Kuffy , Afternic is a trademarked term

I believe that my site is a nominative fair use of their name. My intention is to try to avoid Afternic clients being lured into attempting to buy names that are either stolen or being front-run. There is no way for me to do this without mentioning their name. I hope that they will take the view that fixing the problem ( which is what I want from this) is preferrable to the publicity that they will get from supporting fraudsters if they try to shut down the site. It could turn a minor and insignificant site into something with much wider exposure.

 

[Kuffy]

Here is another one that is listed there, and it is not for sale - it's one I bought to develop.

Isn't there a $70 fee to buy these names, or is that on Afternic?

 

[Michael M]

Here is another one that is listed there, and it is not for sale - it's one I bought to develop.

No offense, @Kuffy - but once again you could easily take action to prevent these listings by setting up an afternic account.

This isn't malice on Afternic's part and probably not on the person that is listing it either... More than likely the former owner of the domain did not delete the domain off of their worksheet, so each time they upload it - it is readded (if it had been deleted in the first place)

Could Afternic do better ownership checks? Sure. But, I imagine from their point of view - they validated the previous owner before and have no reason to assume they don't still have ownership if they still have it listed for sale. In the end, it is the domain sellers responsibility to keep their profile up to date - or risk losing it if they can't honor a sale.

So if you took the time to setup an Afternic account, only as a placeholder, then your listing would over-ride theirs once you had been verified as the owner. Then make sure to "hide" the domain under Status, and the listings will go away. Even if the other seller kept uploading their spreadsheet with that domain, it would stay stuck in review on their profile and would not show for sale.

On the subject of the fast transfer you mentioned in a past post - if you haven't approved the Afternic email then the domain can not be fast transferred. So you are covered there.

So if you want the problem fixed - you can fix it. If you want it to stay the way it is - then it will.

 

[tomcarl]

I like the new premium domain video/offer. And the appraisal tool has come in handy more than once to close sales so far.

Now if only you guys set up GoDaddy nameservers for direct buy now landing pages and update Afternic someday, I'd be one happy domainer.

50 domain view per page on afternic has been difficult to work with these past years.

 

[Kuffy]

So do I have to join every market place, and check daily to make sure that my names aren't listed?
Also, you haven't addressed the issue of trust. I don't trust Afternic or Godaddy, and this opinion is based on threads on Name Pros, and their responses ( or lack of them ). I consider that I am putting my names at risk by signing up with Afternic - am I wrong? probably, but I don't want to take the risk.

btw The LoLdot.com name is listed by Godaddy, and not by Afternic as far as I can see. This probably is a result of a listing by a former GoDaddy account holder. I didn't acquire the name through GD. It would be a simple matter to email the registrant 14 days (say) into expiry, and ask him if he wants to maintain the listing. If he fails to reply, then they just delist the name. Saves all this hassle.

 

[Premiums]

I like GD appraisal ... it works for me)

 

[Premiums]

love it

 

[carob]

Has anyone noticed these estimates popping up in their GD account next to the list of domains you own, with a link to list them for sale? That is in an account with no domains for sale - weird for an enduser to get that and be told their domain is worth 2k.

 

[Kuffy]

Well afternic seems to have upped the ante for this name. Not bad for a $1 purchase.

I haven't received an alert about this, or any indication that they are trying to sell it.

 

[ResoluteDomains]

There is a huge flaw, if you have any set with make offer, it is giving an appraisal
which has no bearing.

So if o had cryptorate.com set with make offer, and $1000 min at afternic, it would show $1000 min make offer, and appraisal
say $1900. Given this name sold for $99000, if a buyer saw this they would
never want to pay $99000.

@Joe Styler get rid of appraisals on make offer domains, you are implying something that is inaccurate. Trying to fill in the blank, with an untrue number.

This is 100% true. I've had to fight to educate people who demanded to only pay XX for a domain that a machine thinks is worth XX but its value is worth XXXX to a company. This is a aftermarket sales killer.