A blogger recently accused Go Daddy of misusing customer domain name search activity for profit. The process is called domain name front running and it means a registrar monitors customer searches and then registers the domain names for their own purposes.
Let me say, unequivocally, Go Daddy never has and never will front run domain names. Ever.
So why would someone believe they experienced front running? Sheer volume. As the world’s largest registrar, the volume of domain name activity, both in terms of availability searches and registrations we see, is significant. Go Daddy performs tens of millions of availability checks for our customers each day, many of which are searches for the same domain name by different customers.
In fact, more than six percent of customer searches for available domain names are performed by more than one person each day. This overlap in domain name requests happens every day. As unique as customers believe their domain name ideas are, there’s more “innovation collision” than many people realize. With so many domain name registrations happening every day, there is a good probability a domain name you searched for is also being searched by someone else.
We take our customers’ privacy and intellectual property seriously. To protect data from being intercepted over the general Internet, our website is protected by SSL Encryption. This prevents electronic eavesdropping on all transactions relating to domain searches and purchases. Even our internal availability and registrations systems are sequestered into secure networking environments for an added measure of privacy assurance.
Below is a typical example of how front running misconceptions can occur.
This is an extract from our logs with specifics removed for anonymity:
The same domain names are often searched by multiple people in a short period of time. The example we are using above is not an exception.
As the Internet expands, so will the competition for domain name registrations, and situations like this will happen more and more often.
Kinda odd I don’t see any comments unless they’re just not approved yet. But, I suppose that’s a…good thing?
Anywho, thanks for sharing.
This is definitely a probable scenario. One consideration which is not revealed is when one of these persons has a trojan on their computer. Front running criminals will do the front-running and hope to sell the domain at a nice profit.
People like to trash talk GD… and those who do have no experience and as soon as something they want is not available they come up with allegations with no proof.
GD is very safe to use! Using it for a long time with no issues.
NEXT!
The very fact that Go Daddy has a system that logs the domains people search and what their availability is, says to me very plainly that they’re looking to buy up popular domains…
Why else would you log when, and what people are searching for? You’re a domain registrar, don’t your services internally track which names are and are not actually registered? Why are you logging searches?
Also, in before this post is never published; cause I just debunked your debunk.
WWWizardd, To help us address claims such as this, we started logging domain registration activity. We were looking for an efficient, empirical way to forensically analyze the search activity to look for any patterns that might indicate an issue. Appreciate you taking the time to comment.
Interesting, I didn’t know there was a term for this, actually today I just lost a great domain name I had searched for a week ago (I buy mine in bulk so chose to wait). Luckily I’m assured that mine was pure coincidence, since it’s a highly searched keyword and I did a whois search and the registrant is in Michigan with a full name/PO Box and doesn’t seem related to Go Daddy. That said, what’s stopping a Go Daddy employee from checking the logs and snapping up the popular domains? Do you have internal policies and procedures in place to prevent this scenario Richard?
I am wondering about the ability of 3rd party companies to access GoDaddy’s info. Coincidence IS possible, but I just lost a domain the same exact day I looked it up using GoDaddy. Strangely enough, the domain was purchased through GD. Hmmmmmm.
For the record, I was attempting to purchase a rather unique domain name that I seriously doubt anyone else would have used….unless they had access to searches done on GD and wanted to sell it to me at a higher price.
When I called GD to talk to them about it, they said this was highly improbable and just coincidence.
Maybe the front running squatters are hacking GDs database?
Even stranger is that when I go to the actual site of the domain I searched for, it reads “DomainName.com is now available for purchase! Call today to find out how you can buy this domain at a great price!”
If that isn’t front running, I don’t know what is. This smells really strange to me.
SimpleCashSurveys,
Apologies for the delay in responding!
While I can’t go into details, I can definitely say that we have both restrictions to access as well as explicit policies restricting use by anyone who has access this data for support purposes.
Again, sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
Thats a probability, but not written in stone, cause my experience is totally different.
i checked a domain name, that was available, and i had products that i had to check and decided to buy in bulk, in one transaction.
only to find that the domain is not available anymore, and registered to go daddy, which had it offered through the domain purchase service, and asked for some amount to negotiate the price with them selves.
so i waited a year to for the domain to expire, and then the placed in on auction for $40.
again i waited a few days while noticing the bids and view counts only to show my visits and no bids.
and finally when the second time the bidding ended, with no bids at all and only my views. they registered the domain to them selves.
iv been always a loyal customer and had some manny referrals to my own customers to use GD’s services.
but now really disappointed to see this happens.
its not the end of the world, but i thought at least when i get to the customer service and explain the issue they will simply apologize and fix this matter, instead they tried to come up with non reasonable excuses which made things even more complicated, a whole issue with a sorry can be solved.
I have to add my two cents here. I have never been one to wear the tinfoil hats. However, there comes a time in the life of the Internet when certain things seem mathematically impossible. One of our clients searched Godaddy for a portmanteau of a real word and a completely made up word. It seems implausible that in 15 years of ICANN supervision, nobody liked this unique set of letters enough to take the domain, yet within an hour of the GoDaddy search, the name was taken. Within 3 days, it was for sale on GoDaddy.
Tiger Woods was not cheating on his wife until…he was. Jerry Sandusky was not a pedophile until…he was. Nixon was not breaking into the Watergate until…he was. It will not surprise me in the slightest if I hear, a year from now, that there was some connection – direct or oblique – between GoDaddy and these strange domain claims.
LOL, GD have been domain name front running for years. I searched for a domain in 2006 at GD and went to buy the next day and of course I was to late as GD had registered it by then. At the time I was incensed so entered some other obscure domain for fun which again was purchased by GD. I admit to then going on a childish domain lookup spree at GD – you know what happened, but hey, it was my fun at the time.
If you say so, why is the domain I have searched yesterday is showing owned by ” Domains By Proxy, LLC” which is Godaddy’s affiliate. Can you please elaborate??
Hello GD and the participated colleagues in subjected discussion..
This technique of GD sales is of inbound attraction marketing where they track user active domain words search and reserve those domain names assigned to sales agents within GoDaddy.. So that they are very sure to do long-term business if they same customer comes and visits back to purchase the similar domain name.. On the other hand in understanding with GD business terminology of the said excel reporting must highlight the ipaddress’es of two or more different originated from different county individuals to justify that they do have valid business reason to back order the given domain names for concurrent demand and must me put to auction and online bidding instead.. squeezing money from innocent customers and keep tied up unprivileged..
The explanation gdaddy gives that somebody else probably searched the same day and bought it because you didn’t is ludicrous. Statistically that would be very unlikely. That means for the entire history of the internet that domain name was available and on the very same day you search it someone else buys it? Odds wise it would be something 1400 to 1