report Significantly Increased Auction Activity

[Ategy]

Wow .. I'm actually having a frustrating day at auction .. just about all the domains I'm watching (just about all the best on my personal list and quite a few from my shared public list are getting far above average number of bids and well above average prices.

Usually on my days off I manage to snag a few cheap .. and even turn down some really good ones .. it's almost as if instead of just one heavyweight (like HugeDomains) competing with the rest of us .. that there are now two heavy hitters battling it out for everything barely even leaving any scraps for the rest of us.

To the point where names of the type/quality I was getting at at $17, $12 or even closeout are hitting three figures .. and domains I'd grab mid-high $xx are hitting $250++ and up.

While this certainly sucks for auction buyers in the short term .. if it keeps up .. it could mean significantly better wholesale prices in the long term .. which could be either good or bad for domainers depending on the particulars of their portfolio.

I did notice patterns like this last year .. wish I tracked it better. Before the day even started and most bids began, I did notice it certainly was a big day in terms of number of good names .. maybe that was part of it?

Curious if I'm the only one seeing this?

 

[bmugford]

It has been going on for awhile.

The end user demand for quality domains is about the same, only re-seller prices have increased dramatically. At the current prices many of the domainers are the end users.

Brad

 

[wwwweb]

I have been bidding at godaddy for years, back when a bid caused a 2 minute reset, not 5 minute reset, something is out of whack, someone who from my bids, and outbids shows hugedomains in the winners circle the majority of the time must be using a script to buy up this much inventory, because to humanly bid, and outbid is just not possible.

VRDOMMY there is actually another thread here where ARCA has contributed a great deal of information as have others which shows where all this inventory lands once the whois settles.

One shocking factor his how huge names ended up with 4M+ domains when not long ago they were sitting with 2.5M.

I tested this bot strategy last week, every decent name got a $10 backorder placed on it with 5-10 minutes to go, or if you bid on a low priced domain in a multi bid position another bidder comes in, and puts a low $xxx proxy bid in, effectively pushing you to outbid them, albeit outbid yourself by paying way to much for it.

Ategy not how you just noticed this now, but you will see it day in, and day out, and you can watch huge names inventory rise in correlation with it. The game has changed, and it costs a lot of money to play against these bots. They come with the attitude if we are not going to win it, we are going to make you pay a price where you will never profit from it.

If you want to play with the same rules, I would suggest godaddy get rid of these api connections, and everyone bid on a human level straight up, but they won't as it is much to profitable at this point.

Those cracks where some of those names you thought were gems were getting thru, basically got sealed with caulking, and not much is going to get thru the cracks anymore. Not sure if they have access to watchlists, but anything with an appraisal has a target.

By creating this inbalance in the marketplace, there are other big players who play in this space, M M, Webcontents etc... this has caused them to up their game also, throw in a few small players, and maybe actual users who just want a single domain, and you have created the perfect storm.

Godaddy has been tweaking this system for years, why do you think usernames are still withheld to date, they just found the perfect partner customer in huge domains, and it's game on.

 

[Arca]

Just today or yesterday "Landlording.com" went for $1,200! That is a wholesale $5k domain and retail $20k+.

Pugs.net went for $1,125. Which I don't mess with .nets often... but seriously that is a steal.

Both of the above I missed because I'm still learning GoDaddy's sh*tty bidding system. Whoever got them owes me a drink because they got them for at least $1500 less than I would have been willing to pay.

I haven't messed with GoDaddy for like 5 years because they pissed me off, so these are just over the last few days since I've been back.

I have a posting on NamePros asking for wholesale pricing for .COMs. I've received 90% garbage priced like gold. Compared to what I've been able to see on NamePros GoDaddy is a steal.

Landlord is a noun, and it cannot, afaik, be used as a verb. I don't think you can put -ing at the end to denote a verbal action in this case, and I have never heard anyone say they do "landlording" for a living. LandlordING is simply an ungrammatical construct, and a relatively awkward one (lording alone does not denote a verbal action either), it's certainly not a real word, so that really limits the end user price. $1200 already seems really on the high end for reseller (I'd have expected the name to go for $350 to $700 at most in an auction among domainers), and $5K looks more like end-user pricing than "true" re-seller price imo. I struggle to see this name sell for $20K+ unless you own hundreds of thousands of names and follow the Mike Mann strategy.

But the good news is that if you think domains like landlording.com and pugs.net for low $X,XXX are real steals, you haven't missed out on any opportunities because domains of this quality come up for auction at GD every day, and more often than not sell for less. And if you would have been willing to pay $1500 more for each of these (so $2500-3000 range), as you said in your post, I can guarantee you that going forwards you'll be able to win almost every single auction at GoDaddy for domains of a similar quality. The only limit will be your own budget, more so than competition from other domainers.

 

[jideofor]

Never get attached to domains... if they bid above your limit and reasonable entry, let them have it. Let the domain name go.

 

[Arca]

it's almost as if instead of just one heavyweight (like HugeDomains) competing with the rest of us .. that there are now two heavy hitters battling it out for everything barely even leaving any scraps for the rest of us.

I'm also seeing this dynamic. Every single auction today seemed to have two bots going at it (one of them belonging to HugeDomains). Nothing closed with zero bids and went to closeouts. Same as yesterday, though even more pronounced today.

 

[Arca]

Pretty steep accusation. Any proof ?

Not sure I would call it a "steep accusation" (an accusation is defined as: a charge or claim that someone has done something illegal or wrong), let me clarify how the GoDaddy auctions system works: It's GoDaddy themselves that provide API access to corporate buyers so that they can set up their bots to bid. So I'm not "accusing" anyone. Bot bidding among the big spenders is not just tolerated but facilitated by GoDaddy. This is no secret. Reps from GoDaddy have acknowledged here on NP a number of times that certain bidders (generally corporate buyers, regular buyers are not granted access to their API) use their API to place automated bids. Certain bot bidding patterns are known to belong to certain corporate entities (i.e. HugeDomains), and this is easy to track. What was evident yesterday, and today, is certain identical bid patterns repeating across auctions on such a large scale that no human could maintain such accurate bidding activity on such a broad scale. It's not possible that one human behind each bidder account could place bids for domains at the same second every time they bid for this many auctions, and that they could monitor the entire pool of names getting bid on at the same time (some of these bots "respond" to other bids by joining the bidding, they get this info real-time via GD's auctions API - their bids come in as regular as clockwork).

But you are of course welcome to argue against this: Could you provide some evidence to back up your claim that prices are up because bidders "feel" rich. What are you basing this on? How many auctions do you bid in at GoDaddy auctions normally, and how many did you bid in yesterday when bidding activity was notably up? What about those bidding patterns led you to believe that the bidders felt rich? Average sold domains at GD above $100 is usually about 75, yesterday it was 164, significantly higher than all the days preceding it this year - Do you mean to say that bidders felt poor between Jan 1 and Feb 3, leading to less bidding activity on those days, and that they felt rich on Feb 4 (and today), leading to a sudden increase?

 

[Asfas1000]

Domainers are paying more money due to competition. This doesn't change whatever limits one places.

 

[wwwweb]

Just today or yesterday "Landlording.com" went for $1,200! That is a wholesale $5k domain and retail $20k+.

Pugs.net went for $1,125. Which I don't mess with .nets often... but seriously that is a steal.

Both of the above I missed because I'm still learning GoDaddy's sh*tty bidding system. Whoever got them owes me a drink because they got them for at least $1500 less than I would have been willing to pay.

I haven't messed with GoDaddy for like 5 years because they pissed me off, so these are just over the last few days since I've been back.

I have a posting on NamePros asking for wholesale pricing for .COMs. I've received 90% garbage priced like gold. Compared to what I've been able to see on NamePros GoDaddy is a steal.

Landlording.com for $1,200 seems like a great price for godaddy to achieve, ING is not very popular with sell thru rates, so $5K wholesale, I don't see it, as it isn't even a real word, more of a verb type, $20K seems like a real unique one off buyer, but sometimes experience in key industries speaks larger than not for sure.

I agree .net is a crapshoot right now, if you breed dogs, great end user name, but they can add a keyword to the .com, and pay reg fee, which is the way most want to go these days.

I have actually backed off a bit, as prices have titled a over wholesale rates, which will tend to lead to higher outlay, and longer hold times, based on increased ask prices. Will let market settle a bit, or take a breather, but overall more bidders in this small space, can have a huge impact on prices, in this supply and demand based industry.

Thanks for the comments, much appreciated.

 

[Ategy]

Never get attached to domains... if they bid above your limit and reasonable entry, let them have it. Let the domain name go.

lol .. yup .. I agree .. as I didn't end up buying any at auction today (grabbed a couple of closeouts though) .. but that wasn't really my point .. just surprised to see what seems to be a very noticeably drastic increase in auction end prices, and in overall activity in general.

 

[Arca]

It has been going on for awhile.

The end user demand for quality domains is about the same, only re-seller prices have increased dramatically. At the current prices many of the domainers are the end users.

Brad

You are right that re-seller prices are often getting very close to what looks like end user pricing in auctions. However, yesterday was something else than the "normal" situation though. As @ategy noted, there was a significant increase in bidding activity and competition. It was very notable for anyone bidding.

Usually 50-100 domains sell for $100+ at GoDaddy Auctions each day, sometimes the number is slightly over or under this amount, but there rarely seems to be notable deviation from the 50-100 per day range. So the average is probably somewhere around 75 names sold above $100 at GD auctions each day.

Yesterday at least 164 domains sold for $100+ at GoDaddy auctions, which is by far the highest number of domains sold above $100 in one day at GD this year. I went back and looked at all the sales reports for 2018, and no other day comes close. So the number of domains sold above $100 practically more than doubled overnight.

I personally think the quality/quantity of names that came up for auction at GD was completely average, so I doubt this was due to a bunch of stellar names coming up for auction. The difference was a lot more of what looked liked automated bot bids (that bid rather aggressively against each other). There seems to be even more such bidding activity today.

 

[VRdommy]

I refer to it as "the wealth effect"
A condition normally named for events in the economy from a high level of stock market valuations.
People spend more on things just because their 401k is currently ridding high. They 'feel' rich.
But it has ripple effects on the whole economy including names.

I have been expecting it. And it is showing itself.

 

[urlurl]

i've seen this over the last few years. and it seems to come in waves - some weeks/months i see a huge influx of activity and then it dies off

Just ride between the waves... or you will end up blowing your wad on ok names.

 

[Ategy]

They might, although I suspect not, have some human intervention, as prices in the auction rise. But that probably doesn't make them bots, but apps.

That's what I would be doing if I had that access. Set up a great algorithm to to all sort of wild and creative bidding .. but more importantly combining that with human steering. Basically the human sees a new bid pop up on a domain that had no bids .. and has at least 5 minutes to plus that new domain into their system. I actually wouldn't even mind going up against bots (with equal information access) ... but combine a live person with a bot/app and you can really do amazing.

 

[Ategy]

My only concern with Bots is *IF* they have more information than we get. Otherwise I just bid on domains as I normally would. It's not the fact they are bots that bugs me .. it's the fact the volume and prices were so high I couldn't be my usual stingy self by grabbing what I considered to be my usual steals (was too good to last I guess)! lol

But who knows if the bots API access have more info or not? I asked Joe and Nick (GoDaddy) in another thread (https://www.namepros.com/posts/6458702/) the full list of what exactly the data fields they had access to were. And Joe seemed rather annoyed claiming he thought he already answered twice in another thread (which he actually didn't at all .. lol), and then only answered the question in part without specifying what EXACT datafields APIs have access to, other than just saying they don't have access to Proxy bid amounts.

Joe Styler & Paul Nicks ...
1- What exactly are all the data fields available to the API?
2- Does the data returned to the API for "Highest bid" include the highest proxy bid, or just the current highest active bid (actual sale price if no more bidding)?

3- I think what he meant was how many people in general have access to the API .. I'm curious about that number as well just to have an idea of how many people we're talking about?

I did answer your other question on the other thread twice already I believe so I ignored it. I can only say the same thing so many times, there is no ability to see someone's proxy bid on the API. It doesn't really seem like there would be from an observer of the auctions as well, otherwise many of the biggest bidders on the API would have a clear advantage, and I suspect there would be among other things a thread on How Come I get outbid by the exact amount over my proxy bid all the time? etc. It's not really like you can hide something like that. This is the last time I am going to address this, I don't know how else to say it. No one on the API can see your proxy bid.

I found it a little odd that he felt it was appropriate to ignore such a serious and straight forward question when he only "believed" he answered it in another thread? lol .. In fairness to him .. it did seem like the most important thing I wanted to know was if they could see proxy amounts .. but I also clearly said I wanted a list of every datafield .. that list was never given .. and is what's most important to me as I rarely proxy anyways.

But my main concern is if they can see number of watchers .. because I rarely ever place proxy bids except if I'm work. I'm concerned about this because new closeout pages now show how many people are "watching" a domain .. if bots see that data field at all times (even before auction) then they have a HUGE advantage. I spend hours a marking domains to watch, and then they just come in and only need to scan the domains I and other domainers are watching. Otherwise bots are simply quicker to bid and I don't mind competing against them since we do get 5 minutes to raise our bid.

One other gripe would be more with the closeout snipping .. but on domains I really want, I often just place a $12 bid 6 minutes before an auction ends (sometimes if I'm at "work" I'll have to place a bid an hour or two in advance and cross my fingers .. lol). GD has randomized the closeout times a bit .. but obviously a bot can just refresh every second automatically .. which is their only real advantage (although be it a HUGE one).

Also very curious if they can actually see the actual amount of proxy bids. I know Joe said no. And I totally believe that's what he believes to be true. But let's be honest in saying the GoDaddy platform is a colossal mess full of bugs, glitches and inefficiencies .. I'm not sure anybody truly knows for sure! lol

A couple of weeks ago I lost a solid domain because of a perfect storm of THREE separate bugs/issues! It was very clear I had a much better understanding of the ins and outs of their platform than even my rep. I feel really bad for him .. he's always trying to be helpful .. but there are just too many bugs they aren't aware of on the platform .. it's almost impossible for them to really know more than power users like ourselves who go into every nook and cranny of their platform.


On a far more serious note ... There was a bug I found and reported a few times a few years ago (before I was really domaining) where you could get a backdoor mini-page that showed ALL bids .. including proxy bids. This bug was present for many months if not longer (probably even more going back until I discovered it). Even after I reported it it wasn't fixed. The only reason that hole eventually got closed was because they revamped the platform themes at one point and the link was no longer accessible directly (although if someone knew the direct link it's entirely possible they still had access far longer .. and if it was openly available on a webpage .. it certainly was available to Bots).

That effectively would have allowed anybody listing an auction to shill and drive up the price if their domains to right below someone's supposedly secret proxy bid. I really wasn't buying much back then .. I was buying with intend to develop (which I never ended up doing in the years after my big site from 1999 to the mid 2000's). I never bid on anything but expiration auctions. I personally used it to extend auctions hoping the other person would be long offline by the time I actually passed their bid. Or simply to keep bidding below the proxy to give me more time to think about if I really wanted the domain at the proxy price. Looking back I also guess I could have used that bug to save up to $4 by bidding just $1 over the proxy so as not be paying the $5 spread.

However .. I genuinely believe there is nobody at GD out to get us .. and I really believe they are genuine when saying they want to have a fair platform ... just about every person I've talked to at GD has been super nice and friendly and go as far as they can to help. But each and every time I report problems/issues/errors, things rarely change and I rarely hear back .. it all just gets swept under the rug and forgotten. It wouldn't surprise me if there were things about API access even the upper levels of GD just simply aren't aware of. The GoDaddy platform is just too massive to be effectively managed by people who are anything but power users who actually know the ins and outs of the platform.

It would be great to get a clear straight answer of every single data field available to the APIs/Bots. But I've asked too many times and think the likely reason I never get an answer is because the people I ask quite simply don't even know themselves!

 

[Michael M]

As GD auctions continues to grab up more of the different registries expired domains - it is forcing the big players to move away from catching domains at the drop and more over to GD and other auction platforms.

As it has been mentioned in this thread - as more bots become active on a platform they will now be in competition with each other. Emotions are removed and bids are based purely off of variables and static limits that the programmers/operators have set. If the big players don't collude in some fashion then it is likely that these bots will max each other out. (they are unlikely to collude intentionally as their interest are opposite of each other)

I would imagine the bot owners did not expect to be maxed out (or close to) on each domain they bid on. They were playing a game of averages but when someone else is willing to push you on every bid it is going to greatly increase the cost of acquisition across the board.

So in this case I would imagine they will need to rework their bots to try to mitigate the bidding wars with other bots in some form or fashion. In other words I imagine they will have to lower their max bid on mediocre names to continue to be profitable.

(the bots will need to learn to be more conservative with their bidding structure and max bid)

So hopefully in time - bot competition will settle down some price-wise... But I can only imagine will continue to increase in volume.

 

[wwwweb]

lol .. He's the new mascot for the Vegan Alliance!



lol .. yups .. couldn't agree more. I grab a few brandable 5L every now .. but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't even have grabbed Smizz.com at closeout ... nevermind $200+.

It just makes me wonder how many domains do HD sell on an ongoing basis?

Well when most people were not even in the domain industry, dropcatching pre 2011 used to be pretty decent without any type of backorder device, I believe I started detecting Huge Domains back when they weren't so huge sometime around then, and they were cherry picking that stuff that wasn't going thru namejet, or snap $69, and doing quite well, so during this 5 year window they grabbed some really decent names. Then they opened it up, and morphed into Dropcatch, along with Namebright, and now dropcatch dominates the space.

Who would think they would support their competition, and pay, and use their services in Godaddy, but just as they have done to everything else they are doing to the Godaddy platform. We are at least informed on the patterns of what is going on, and are able to adapt, or take a step back. Newbie bidders, or end users keep walking into it, and godaddy is loving it. If every 5L.com with a pulse is going for $2XX, then all we can do is step aside, and let them own it, and say let's see you outsell your spend.

Dropcatch has 2 or 3 big spenders that are the main source of the bids over there, they never back down, they will go up against the end user and take them to $10K if they are bidding on a brand upgrade by chance. It makes it a very expensive, and difficult place to do business also due to these few usernames, many of which are new on the scene. This is a great revenue generator for TurnCommerce, when they lost one their main bidders from South Korea the platform really felt his lack of bids, and at least things came back to common sense, but not so much anymore, as you have the same class of bidders are fighting for the same domain, and much like a dog who doesn't know when he's full, these guys don't know when to stop bidding.

They must be generating to be spending, the level of their buying day in, and day out is a serious budget, they have a all in mentality here, either they taking it all, or nothing.

From what I have noticed it comes in waves, the spending it turns off, and on, but they have been stepping it up, and many here are starting to notice those nibbles they used to be able to get, start to get picked off, and get a big X on them going into the last 5 minutes.

 

[imadoer]

Its really hard to win anymore at expired auction. Unless your over paying. Nothing you can do about it if thats where your bidding.

 

[Name Trader]

Understood, do you still have an active account executive over there in recent times?

Not any more since I transferred all my domains out of GoDaddy, after "the incident". Since I no longer had the 300 domains minimum requirement to have an Account Manager. GoDaddy took my Account Manager away. Quite legitimately. It was the price I was prepared to pay for GoDaddy not to be able to take my domains away from me, at will. It was inconvenient not having email support any longer. But with no domains in my account, and with my deep knowledge of how GoDaddy Registrar operates, there really isn't much necessity for me to have an Account Manager. My auction activity also dried up at the same time. GoDaddy are not a company I trust to give you a fair shake when push comes to shove. That trust has been irrevocably broken. So my continued business with them is severely limited. On purpose. At the same time auction prices have risen somewhat severely (due to HD and proxy bidders generally), and I haven't followed this upward trend. My focus has been on reducing the size of my portfolio. I'm downsizing. Getting rid of the dross. But not going away.

 

[Arca]

So during that flurry of bidding period last week, what we all thought was Huge Domain turned out to be right, they are on the whois of all the did not win section, they are the ones who were churning away, others will probably discover the same results with their whois searches.

Seeing exactly the same thing on my end. HugeDomains show up in the WHOIS record for the vast majority of auctions I've bid in recently. They've actually been winning a lot more auctions than I had anticipated.

Bot bidding seemed to cool down a bit during Feb 11-14. But today and yesterday automated bidding activity was intense again. Looks like they are still testing out how to run their bots, as there has been a lot of variation in bidding patterns over the past week. I've been bidding up bots tens of thousands extra on low quality names over the past few weeks, in the hopes that they'll set up their bots to bid more conservatively. No idea if it has any impact. Doesn't seem like it so far.

 

[VRdommy]

As always, it's about how accurate you are in seeing a future ROI.
These are investment tools. It's just getting more expensive to speculate.

 

[Asfas1000]

Domain lists, although meant to help fellow domainers, only make registrars rich, and domainers poor.

Unless the price is fixed as in available domains.....

 

[Ategy]

Domain lists, although meant to help fellow domainers, only make registrars rich, and domainers poor.

Unless the price is fixed as in available domains.....

I really can't agree with you there at all .. the key is to set your own maximum price you think makes it a good/great deal .. then just do not go over that amount .. in the past most of the domains I've got at auction/closeout were below that limit .. but today it's the complete opposite .. WAY above normal prices .. but I've learned to say "NO"! lol .. That's the key!

 

[Kuffy]

So should I start auctioning names now, or this this price escalation going to continue.

 

[VRdommy]

Domainers are paying more money due to competition. This doesn't change whatever limits one places.

You are correct ...
...BUT...
If you now have more money (or thinking you do) it changes how far you may bid.
And for some it is a matter of bidding at all. Hence the competition.

I will remind all that income tax 'returns' (in the US) also are a factor this time of year.

EDIT: BTW... those expecting to pay in this years income tax are good targets for acquisitions if you feel like making low-ball offers.