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report Significantly Increased Auction Activity

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Ategy

Arif M, NameCult.com TheDomainSocial.comTop Member
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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?
 
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The views expressed on this page by users and staff are their own, not those of NamePros.
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.
 
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Never get attached to domains... if they bid above your limit and reasonable entry, let them have it. Let the domain name go.
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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Domain lists, although meant to help fellow domainers, only make registrars rich, and domainers poor.

Unless the price is fixed as in available domains.....
 
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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! ;)
 
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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.
 
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Domainers are paying more money due to competition. This doesn't change whatever limits one places.
 
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So should I start auctioning names now, or this this price escalation going to continue. :)
 
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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
 
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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.
 
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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.
Agree completely. Curious to see how it shakes out
 
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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.
 
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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.
 
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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.
The price increases since yesterday have largely been driven by automated bot bids. These bots don't "feel" rich, so this is likely not the main driving factor behind these recent price increases.
 
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The price increases since yesterday have largely been driven by automated bot bids. These bots don't "feel" rich, so this is likely not the main driving factor behind these recent price increases.
Pretty steep accusation. Any proof ?

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If it is a bot, it will be won by the bot based on the programmers settings. Someone will own the name. Bot or not.
But if you don't like the game, don't play. They will change the rules to make you comfortable.
As long as there are those that play... it continues.
 
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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?
 
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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.
 
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Could you provide some evidence to back up your claim that prices are up because bidders "feel" rich. What are you basing this on?
Look it up. (The Wealth Effect) It has been studied for many years and is well known in investment circles.

The simple fact remains even if there are 'bots' out there bidding on names, you should only be bidding on valuations of what you feel it is worth to you /OR/ where you can make a profit.
Names will never bring more than someone feels they are worth. You can always question their accuracy.
Why do folks get upset when others feel they are worth more than they do or they can profit at that level.

I do get tired of hearing the bot story from those who will not pay what others find profitable.
You will find plenty of smelly fish when fishing at the bottom. Hold your nose.

 
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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.

Although I agree with most of what you said in your post. But I disagree with this part. Bots are bots. They don't have any attitude. Also if we will never profit from winning it, it's unlikely that they won't profit from it if they won the domain either. That doesn't make any sense.

These bots are programmed with a top price in mind. Which they use the same price for all the domains. They might have a tiered structure depending on the domain value. 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.
 
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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.
 
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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.
I agree, could be some human intervention in there also, given the business they do to hire someone to sit there, and monitor for a few hours a day wouldn't be much of a cost. But I noticed the bots got a lot sharper when the appraisals came into play.

A year ago they were play a system where it they saw a bidding war happening within 5 minutes they would put a $98, or $102 bid in place, I can't remember, but something in that range, and that is what they were willing to pay. Many may remember this frustration when trying to get a chance domain, and having to pay $100 for it. At this point they are blanketing anything with an decent appraisal, and could be a set time long experiment for all we know, but Ategy who is a value buyer started noticing some attention to the type of names he is from time to time easily able to sneak under the rader, but everything is getting scanned with a fine tooth comb now.
 
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Although I agree with most of what you said in your post. But I disagree with this part. Bots are bots. They don't have any attitude. Also if we will never profit from winning it, it's unlikely that they won't profit from it if they won the domain either. That doesn't make any sense.

These bots are programmed with a top price in mind. Which they use the same price for all the domains. They might have a tiered structure depending on the domain value. 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.
Your totally right, it's just Huge Domains have finally got the bots to the point where their formula is starting to work, and they may have missed a few from time to time, and left some crumbs, more and more are noticing the crumbs are up for bid also.

I dealt with namejet today 2 weeks after, they were unable to deliver a name that was sitting at godaddy, no idea why they don't get those names under their roof before they let them into auction.

If you want to play on dropcatch you better clear some room on your credit card limits.

I been doing in this auction game for many years, and I have a healthy spending budget, but even I am starting to take a step back, and say wait a minute, I have to outlay to much, to get to little back, not working.

Wow off topic just saw bitcoin go under $6500
 
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