Why Domain Sellers should sanitize their Sold threads

[Name Trader]

Why do I ask you to PM me before closing a Sales Thread I won on NamePros.

All NamePros forums are searched by Google. So Google is putting every thread into their Cache. This Google Cache can be stored for months/years. If I am selling this domain to a buyer. They are very likely to do a Google Search for the "domainname.com" (in parentheses) to see what comes up. I know I do this search for every domain I buy. Don't you? The problem comes when we are middle of negotiations, and they do a Google Search, and find out I bought the domain for $xx, but I'm asking $xk for the domain. Relations go south quite quicky after that. And it makes it much harder to sell the domain to that buyer.

The solution to this is to "sanitize" the Sales Thread before you close the thread. It's just easier for the seller to do this BEFORE they close the thread. Than for me to to ask you to re-open the thread, make the changes, and then close the thread again. So what do I mean by "sanitize". I mean you should change the Original Title of the thread to the word "CLOSED" (without the parentheses) and to change the entire contents of the Original Post also to the the word "CLOSED". But it shouldn't stop there. The seller should also santize every post they have made in the thread, which mentions the domain name, or the price, or the winner, by replacing the whole post with ".." (two dots).

You might ask:

1) What about the other bidders posts? There is only so much we can do as just the buyer and the seller. It's unreasonable to ask every bidder to sanitize their posts.

2) What if it's a multiple domain auction and there still other domains being offered? Then you should sanitize the domain name(s) which have been sold by (a) Removing them from the Thread Title, and (b) by removing the domain from your original post. By removal, I mean complete removal of the domain name. Because that is better, and even easier to do, than trying to obfuscate the domain name. And, of course, to sanitize any other posts related to that domain in your thread, where you have mentioned the domain name, the price, or the winner, with ".." (two dots).

Why am I posting this proposal:

To be quite honest. I think the sellers of domains on NamePros are only interested in selling their domains, and generally don't care what happens to the domains afterwards. Whereas, the buyers, have a keen interest on what happens after the sale. They don't want Google's Cache, to store these transactions in perpetuity. They don't want to deal with cases like I described above. I think for any seller, although voluntary, they should be following their auctions enough to sanitize their posts of their sold domain names, before they close their threads. It is an obvious goodwill gesture to the buyer.

I've posted this thread in the Beginners Forum, where everybody can reach it. I will also post a link in the Insiders Lounge. So that this will reach as wide a possible range in our community, beginners and experts alike. This is a problem throughout our community. IMHO.

 

[Randolph]

Is everyone forgetting that nearly every domain out there started at reg-fee? If your buyer gets cold feet after finding out you purchased the domain for less, they were going to waste your time anyways.

In my opinion, I find it odd that NamePros doesn't have their sales sections hidden from the eyes of Google. This would be a simple fix and is generally industry standard.

 

[imadoer]

I definitely vote to hide the sales Section!

 

[golan]

It is possible if we all bid like this:
Ba////x.com $7
S----c.net $36

In my multi domain listings, i always number the domains and ask to post bids on numbers, not on names. Like, " # 17 Sold " .

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

The buyer must understand Omar?
Someone sees a name for 10k and searches it and finds out it was purchased for $10 and its up to them to understand.
tell that to the kardashians lol

 

[Andrew Knox]

+1 for making marketplace private/for logged in members only

 

[xynames]

Agreed, and also why I don't even post here at namepros details on any domains I sell anywhere. Busy bodies come along and debate whether it sold for too much money or too little and the buyer might see that. It is unprofessional.

 

[creataweb]

Just FYI as well even cleaned up threads can still show up in Google. I found this out when searching some of my names purchased here as far back as a year ago. I have temporarily stopped buying from here until I find a solution because of the same problem you’re having.

 

[korganian]

Is everyone forgetting that nearly every domain out there started at reg-fee? If your buyer gets cold feet after finding out you purchased the domain for less, they were going to waste your time anyways.

In my opinion, I find it odd that NamePros doesn't have their sales sections hidden from the eyes of Google. This would be a simple fix and is generally industry standard.

2 thumbs up for that suggestion!!!

 

[Name Trader]

There is NO PROBLEM at all, the buyer Must understand that the NEW Domain Owner has a NEW PRICE for the same domain name. Why? Because its a BUSINESS!!

If the buyer don't understand that, its the buyers problem not our problem, and if the buyer don't buy the domain its because they don't have enough money to buy the domain, screw the low budget fake "buyers"!!!

Forget the Google cache, the same example applies to Handregs, when the buyer knows that we register the domain for $ 9 USD and we are asking a 6 figure price for our Handreg.

Conclusion: Don't waste your time with NON SENSE ideas, focus on registering good domains or buy great domains for a cheap price! Once the domain is in your Account and its Officially yours, then you change your sell prices according to your Price & Sale Strategy!!

This is not nonsense. Maybe you haven't lost any sales because of this. But I have. And it hurts when sales are so few and far between.

 

[polymorph]

@iAchilles

It is possible if we all bid like this:
Ba////x.com $7
S----c.net $36

I already saw some users sanitize the names initially. Looks like we should all adopt it as a good practice or require it in the auction's rules until NamePros completely hide the sales section from bots.

 

[xynames]

One thing that happens with these auction/sales threads at NP that leads to more work, is where someone comes along and Quotes something said before that references the name of the domain. Then by the end of the thread you have the domain referenced in:
1) The title
2) The initial thread post by seller
3) Every bid by anyone who has Quoted the initial thread post
4) Every bid by anyone who has referenced the domain
5) Every time seller has Quoted a bid that references the domain.

By the end you might have several posts by several different NP members where the domain is mentioned. To get this cleaned up you must ask each NP member to contact the moderators directly to request clean up.

It might be nice to have a policy that gives the moderators consent to clean up all auction/sales threads. "By posting in an auction/sales thread you give consent to NP moderators to remove any reference to the domain being sold after completion of the auction/sale."

 

[DotKing]

Great point.
I'm also concerned about google search results showing full thread title and full post in search results for months even if it's sanitized back then. I have one thread which is closed and every post is removed since February, but Google still shows full post in SERPs.
Is there any way we (or NP staff) can prevent this from happening?

 

[OmarVG]

The problem comes when we are middle of negotiations, and they do a Google Search, and find out I bought the domain for $xx, but I'm asking $xk for the domain. Relations go south quite quicky after that. And it makes it much harder to sell the domain to that buyer.

There is NO PROBLEM at all, the buyer Must understand that the NEW Domain Owner has a NEW PRICE for the same domain name. Why? Because its a BUSINESS!!

If the buyer don't understand that, its the buyers problem not our problem, and if the buyer don't buy the domain its because they don't have enough money to buy the domain, screw the low budget fake "buyers"!!!

Forget the Google cache, the same example applies to Handregs, when the buyer knows that we register the domain for $ 9 USD and we are asking a 6 figure price for our Handreg.

Conclusion: Don't waste your time with NON SENSE ideas, focus on registering good domains or buy great domains for a cheap price! Once the domain is in your Account and its Officially yours, then you change your sell prices according to your Price & Sale Strategy!!

 

[MasterOfMyDomains]

End users are getting smarter and doing their research on us now too

 

[DotKing]

I don't think that would work. Because the open thread would still be in the Google's Cache. If I remember how this works, correctly?

Well, pages are not in Google cache (google cache is different thing and it lasts much shorter), but they are indexed, like forever. That's the problem. I said what @Randolph said - make closed marketplace posts (or every marketplace post) hidden to Google by blocking them with 'noindex' or any other technique. This is very easy to achieve and no more SERPs from marketplace.
If they are not indexed, they cannot be cached either

 

[Randolph]

Take no offense, stub. I agree with you that this is terrible for the business aspect here and something needs to be done. I won't sell a majority of my domains here because of this sole factor. I'm sure there's hundreds of others that feel the same way.

I understand NP wanting to keep the links in the search engines and gain as much juice as they can. Fact of the matter is it's gross negligence to leave these in the engines. They would gain more activity from the users that fear posting in it's current status.

It comes down to the fact that keeping these threads/sections visible to the search engines actually HARMS their rankings. The threads contain absolutely no valuable content for the engines. Threads often contain the same wording as a large number of the others. They also contain mostly links. These are all penalties in Google's algorithm (last I know of).

If they want to keep the "juice" they're expecting, an additional, optional, block can be added to posts that won't be picked up by search engines. Leaving all other content and the thread itself within the search engine. Domain names within the special block would not show up in snippets of search results.

 

[EZPZYO]

Here's a handy tool.

Remove outdated content tool By Google
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/7041154

 

[iAchilles]

Nice idea in theory but impossible in practice. Take an auction with multiple names, users are going to quote the name when bidding.

This is on Namepros to sort out. Last time this issue cropped up if I recall it was SEO and 401s that were the concern. I would argue that auction threads are low value content so all sales threads should be no indexed from crawlers.

 

[karmaco]

I immediately ask the person to remove all info and put sold and they have done it every time.

It should be a given though nobody wants these sales coming up in google searches. Sometimes I forget and I have been reminded too. Very needed post.

Another annoyance is they sell you a domain and don’t remove it from multiple marketplaces without being asked.

 

[creataweb]

Great point.
I'm also concerned about google search results showing full thread title and full post in search results for months even if it's sanitized back then. I have one thread which is closed and every post is removed since February, but Google still shows full post in SERPs.
Is there any way we (or NP staff) can prevent this from happening?

There was a thread about this but it was closed by the mods. Hence my post above.

 

[DotKing]

As dev I think the simplest way would be to mark page as 'noindex' to crawlers after thread is closed (only in the NP marketplace threads ofc). That way we can even care less about sanitizing threads because they will not be crawlable by Google. I don't see negative impacts, who needs closed marketplace thread indexed by Google anyway, right?

 

[xynames]

I think in the sales threads posters can edit their posts at any time before closure. I think you're asking too much of the moderators. Only IMHO. But asking individual posters is probably an even bigger problem. IMHO.

I've bought domains here and I never have any problem with the OP seller cleaning up the thread even after he has closed the auction. But for him to do anything after it is closed, or for anyone else to do anything after it is closed requires Moderator intervention.

Typically, some sellers will clean up at least the title and first post of a thread to remove reference to the domain there but forget to clean up any references where they have Quoted the domain name via Quoting a prior post.

And then of course as far as the bidders who have referenced the domain name in their posts either directly or via Quoting the domain name from a prior post, these bidders don't just stand around waiting for an auction to end and then immediately go in to clean up their posts, nor would I expect them to jump in quickly the instant an auction is over to handle that. But bidders have been - so far - kind enough to contact the Moderators at my request, and request clean up after prompting from me after the auction is closed.

Not to belabor the point, but the way this works in the real world:

By the end of the auction thread you will have the domain referenced in:

1) The title
2) The initial thread post by seller
3) Every bid by anyone who has Quoted the initial thread post
4) Every bid by anyone who has referenced the domain
5) Every time seller has Quoted a bid that references the domain.

And then...the auction will close before any of the bidders are able to deal with (3) and (4). I mean - the OP seller is not going sit around waiting for bidder clean up of their threads after auction's close is he? In the real world what happens, best case scenario is that:

A. Auction ends.
B. Seller goes in and cleans up (1) and (2), often forgets to deal with (5). Seller closes auction thread.
C. Bidders' references to domain remain (3) and (4).

Now it is up to the Moderators, and per NP rules only after prompting / request from the posters themselves, to clean up (5), (3) and (4).

This is the way it happens in the real world. Hence,
It might be nice to have a policy that gives the moderators consent to clean up all auction/sales threads. "By posting in an auction/sales thread you give consent to NP moderators to remove any reference to the domain being sold after completion of the auction/sale."

 

[IMEZI]

I have read about some member getting pissed off because missing xxxx$ just because the buyer found out the domain names listed on namepros from google. With my limited knowledge about SEO i try to conduct some trial and error to remove domain names from Google Indexed, yes it will be need some effort and time but almost no cost of it. If you could save your future business deal, why not?

related domain name : MONETIZEAGAIN.COM
auction thread date : 13 October 2017
Google Indexed

Keep in your minds that you need to contact your seller asking for removing domain names and editing the auction thread title first.

Here is what i do on 7 November 2017
1. sign in to gmail.com
2. open new tab and access https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url
3. type the auction thread url into the form

4. submit the captcha form
5. press the submit button
6. and you will find the notification about your request

7. repeat it every 2 days for 3 - 5 times
8. clear your pc/laptop cache and check it on google

And now 1 December 2017 i check on it, related auction url has been gone from Google Indexed

I hope this short and simple guide could help you all preventing from unneccesarry broken deal :D

Additional suggestion for NP : completely delete all closed marketplace thread with certain timerange (such as 1 year before), put redirection to all of them to a single landingpage, NP could sell advertisement on the landingpage. By deleting those thread it will help clean up database and perhaps could save some hosting cost...

 

[Name Trader]

Is everyone forgetting that nearly every domain out there started at reg-fee? If your buyer gets cold feet after finding out you purchased the domain for less, they were going to waste your time anyways.

In my opinion, I find it odd that NamePros doesn't have their sales sections hidden from the eyes of Google. This would be a simple fix and is generally industry standard.

But if they don't get upset because they don't know, you are more likely to conclude a sale.

I've asked the Mods about this before. The answer is these Cache links, add juice to their SEO and provide a path for those people who don't know about NP's to visit. Which might mean revenue for NP's if they click on links on NP's. I can understand that. It's just business. I think they will NEVER make the For Sale threads non-searchable. But that shouldn't mean we cannot make the Google Cache harder to identify domains and prices.