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.

 

[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]

@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.

 

[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.

 

[Premiums]

love it

 

[Joe Styler]

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.

You can see them in bulk if you come to namescon. We have a couple really cool things exclusively for Namescon attendees.

 

[Joe Styler]

@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.

If you are talking about listing other premium names similar to what the buyer is searching for then there is nothing I know of in the near term to bring that back. We did a lot of testing and what we saw was that people either buy the exact premium domain they were searching for or they move on, they do not typically buy a similar name. We tried a lot of tests some of which were putting them right below the main result, putting them on the top right column, featuring them as alternatives, sending people emails with similar names etc, etc. A lot of tests. The only one we found that works is if someone has a tld other than .com and the .com is available for sale on the Aftermarket a % of people will buy that exact name in the .com.

Times and attitudes and buying habits change so I am sure at some point we will test it again, but we do not have any immediate plans to do so.

 

[DnFolk]

It looks to us like it is for sale. It is listed by the whois registrant and the WHOIS even says that its for sale on Afternic.
simplypho.com
whois information
Registrant Contact Information:
Name
Pacific Web Host
Organization
THIS DOMAIN IS FOR SALE, CHECK AFTERNIC.COM
Address
97 Grafton St.
City
Bondi Junction
State / Province
NSW
Postal Code
2022
Country
AU
Phone
+61.8158886883

Here is another Whois capture from this one. I am using WHO.is maybe they have out of date info or something but these whois lookups are showing different people than you.
Registrant Contact Information:
Name
Vyacheslav Vasilenko
Organization
Address
Bratiev Gorkushenko 1 - 48
City
Saint-Petersburg
State / Province
Saint-Petersburg
Postal Code
198516
Country
RU
Phone
+7.9119274677
Email

These are not updated and old owner details. for the latest ones check whois.com

 

[anantj]

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.

Not at all. @Kuffy is not the domain seller in this case at all and it definitely is not their responsibility. Why should they be responsible for an unrelated, 3rd party service that they have no connection to (Afternic in this case)

 

[Joe Styler]

GD skipped following some of the basic appraisal ratio rules: A/A, A/B, A/C, B/A, B/B, B/C, C/C ...

1. Verification
2. Validation
3. Testing
4. Prevention of unsystematic risk
5. Geo effect (Local, Broad, Specific ...)
etc

now is more like pawnshop owner without calling an external expert for appraisal and verification.
Good luck
imo

You can read about the technical aspects which explains more about how the appraisal system is made. The main person working on it is a PhD MIT grad and his machine learning work is pretty unbelievable. We have large sets of data - millions and millions of sales which are compared the domains submitted for appraisal. We do quite a bit of comparisons. You can read more about it here - https://engineering.godaddy.com/author/jason-ansel/

 

[Premiums]

I think it was my idea Godaddy should hire me

e.g.: "buy now" landing page for one of my domains))

 

[Mister Funsky]

Very valid points made above...consumer/end user trust is high with respect to gddy...so if a name is wrongly 'appraised' by their bot, it will damage domainers to no end.

The answer is simple. Leave it up to the domain owner via checkbox if they want any automated appraisal to show on any name(s) that is offered for sale.

Edit: After a couple year absence from gddy, I just signed up again for domainer club as I had intended to start buying from auctions again. If they do not remove and/or allow us (domainers) to have the option to show or not, I will be calling my cc company to get a refund.

I appreciate having the tool for reference and past sale info but it can cause issues if not handled properly.

 

[tonyk2000]

GoDaddy's BIN prices are pretty consistently way higher than the GoDaddy domain appraisal tool.

I am sure that after checking halloween savings from my (non-US) IP it did not show any valuation. So the results may be geo-specific or browser specific, and/or also depending on a number of queries or spying cookies. Which only complicates the picture which is by itself not clear at all.

 

[xynames]

What I have noticed is that if I have BIN of more than their valuation (which is usually in low 4 figs), then they don’t display their “estimated value” which is good sign for domain sellers. If it was going to show the estimated value for all domains, then for sure the sales would have been going down for all of us.

I just set a BIN on a domain couple days ago ago and on the GDiddy site that BIN is not even appearing but the much lower GD appraised price is appearing.

Perhaps once the domain is Afternic fast transfer listed - seems to take a while again these days -
https://www.namepros.com/threads/pr...rt-problems-here.1006373/page-22#post-6451754
the appraised price will disappear.

 

[Lox]

Perfect hash algorithm for the retail value of the inventory.

 

[Premiums]

@anantj why you dislike my post??

 

[Premiums]

show me your $XX,XXX "Premiums"?

 

[Asfas1000]

This domain has a BIN of $94,888 off GD, so the estimated value of $4,325 and "consumerfinancing.com: (same name, different extension) sold for over $6,600" is not going to be of much help.

Probably the .com domain itself sold for $6,600 at some time, rather an alt. extension.

 

[tonyk2000]

they should tweak it and only quote the estimated value if it is the same or less than the purchase price.

Indeed, but, since the system offers >1 domains in any search performed, and it is also normal for an enduser to perform various searches, this would not eliminate misunderstanding. Enduser will reasonably ask why some domains he is offered are appraised, while others are not. Which may already be the case for registry premium domains in new gtlds - they don't show appraisals on registry premiums, do they? So it would be really better to remove this "tool" at all from domain search results.

 

[Angelicus]

As far as I can see new display is rolled out only for US based visitors. UK, CANADA still shows old layout w/o 'estimate' price.

 

[Acroplex]

godaddy is getting too big now, it's almost scary how much control one company has over the domain resale market. Rick Schwartz was right to criticize them.

He still runs GoDaddyBlows .com.

 

[tonyk2000]

Cc @Joe Styler
Joe, can you please comment? In particular, what (if any) practical effect did this change have on sales after a few days?

 

[tonyk2000]

I performed a number of GD searches on HugeDomains owned domains featured on their 1st page and did not receive a single appraisal ( statements like why is it great and youtube video are still there). Obviously hugedomains is one of a key customers and their domains would frequently be appraised with lower values due to specific porfolio generation methods - all automated on their end so not the best quality/price combination for an enduser.

Did they complain?

I performed a search on a couple of namefind domains (thanksgivingsales.com, halloweensavings.com) which had lower appraisals on Sunday with screenshots posted here - and also did not receive any appraisals at the time of this writing.

Finally, I searched a few domains I own - and they are all shown appraised, but with higher values.

Does it mean that GD elected not to provide appraisal value IF it would be lower and asking price is higher?

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

 

[Joe Styler]

I performed a number of GD searches on HugeDomains owned domains featured on their 1st page and did not receive a single appraisal ( statements like why is it great and youtube video are still there). Obviously hugedomains is one of a key customers and their domains would frequently be appraised with lower values due to specific porfolio generation methods - all automated on their end so not the best quality/price combination for an enduser.

Did they complain?

I performed a search on a couple of namefind domains (thanksgivingsales.com, halloweensavings.com) which had lower appraisals on Sunday with screenshots posted here - and also did not receive any appraisals at the time of this writing.

Finally, I searched a few domains I own - and they are all shown appraised, but with higher values.

Does it mean that GD elected not to provide appraisal value IF it would be lower and asking price is higher?

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

It is really hard to say what is happening. Since we are testing this it is going to be in a constant state of flux for a while. We may be doing any number of things. One ip may see one result and another a different result, signed in may be different than a customer not signed in, some groups of names may show a specific price and some may not, and some may show a phone number to call and some may not etc. Whatever I say is happening now is probably not the same thing someone else will currently see and also not the same thing that will be there tomorrow. Right now I dont see a specific appraisal price shown on any of the random names I tested, none of which were owned by Huge Domains.
At the end of the day we test a lot of things and find the best way to present things to help promote your domains. We are going to tweak and test and use the data to drive decisions to help you sell more names.