[CASE STUDY] Why You Should NEVER Use Gdaddy for Your Domain Research! [PICS]

Hey BHWer's,

Take this post as a word of warning! Learn from my mistakes!

In the past I had heard about Go--Daddy buying peoples domains that they searched for and were available. They would search for a domain and then come back the next day to buy it only to find it was now GONE! Well today I experienced just this!

So I was doing some domain research yesterday looking for a new domain to register and I came up with a KILLER domain that was soo brandable and catchy...I wasnt looking for it in terms of SEO and age...but catchiness and brandability...

BINGO I found a awesome domain with awesome brand ability to register and I searched it on Go--Daddy and lo and behold it was available to purchase!

When I came back today to purchase the domain I see this:




Those little slick willies!!! Man this pissed me off.....pretty shady if you ask me!

Then I wanted to figure out what the catch was...why they do this....and guess what I found:



So they take your intellectual property that you do act on...your good ideas and then purchase the domain and sell you your own intellectual property back for probably 6-10x the original price.....I was gonna get this domain for $4 with private registration (Go--daddy coupon) so this would be up to 25x premium of the original price! Very shady business practices....borderline unethical IMHO....


Then I dug a little further and the rabbit hole went DEEPER...I looked up the WHOis for this particular domain (mydomain.com is not the domain I looked up)....and the WHOis is showing this thing was registered in 2010....what?!!



Now I was not drinking any alcohol or smoking any happy plants so I could be mistaken...but I am 99% sure what I saw last night was true...and the domain was indeed available! I have no idea how they did this....nor how they could have pulled this off..
:drinking2 :yeah:


So guys....next time you have an awesome domain or business idea....BEWARE BEWARE......do not go to Go--Daddy to do your domain research and check if something is available.....go to Name Cheap or another smaller no name domain registrar....

You can still go to Go--daddy and find a Retailmenot coupon for a 99 cent .com domain and buy it from Go--Daddy...BUT DO NOT do this until you are absolutley ready to register the domain or you might have your intellectual property snatched up right from under your nose! :soapbox:

Turbo

i will clear this up for you... truth is.. its not that godaddy bought that domain.. but its high chances that domain is in godaddy auctions.. go give it a check...
their domain availbility checker has some bugs in it that way....somtiems a unavailabe domain is marked available but when u finaly go to checkout itwill say unavailable... so yeah
but most cases its the first case
just go to
auctions.godaddy.com and u will most probably find that domain there
auctions domain is shown available for once.. but when u try adding it to cart it says unavailable or stuff like that..

This happened to me, a guy who goes by name king bought a domain i had been looking at the day before then he put it up for $1800.
When i checked him out it seems he does this for a living, he somehow checks what domains have been searched for, buys the good ones and hopes you buy it off him for a silly price. He has 1000's of domains.

innocent_kid said:

i will clear this up for you... truth is.. its not that godaddy bought that domain.. but its high chances that domain is in godaddy auctions.. go give it a check...
their domain availbility checker has some bugs in it that way....somtiems a unavailabe domain is marked available but when u finaly go to checkout itwill say unavailable... so yeah
but most cases its the first case
just go to
auctions.godaddy.com and u will most probably find that domain there
auctions domain is shown available for once.. but when u try adding it to cart it says unavailable or stuff like that..

Click to expand...

I checked what you said and nothing.....



Lewwy hows does someone get this search info without working inside Go-Daddy to be able to rip peeps off like this?

Seems to be some sort of error somewhere. I can't believe that a company like GD will use such business practices...

You are right , I have also faced same problem, I checked one domain which was available, i checked after 10 days and that was on auction.

Thanks for sharing .

Not saying that you're mistaken but sometimes it happens that godaddy says

- its available
(as a premium domain for $10k or something)

but we miss to read the latter part. might have been this case.. but who knows. Godaddy is shady as fuck

Maybe someone, somewhere in the world thought of the same domain as you it just so happens that he got it first?

Try to contact godaddy and ask them for information?

turbopugsleylx said:

Then I dug a little further and the rabbit hole went DEEPER...I looked up the WHOis for this particular domain (mydomain.com is not the domain I looked up)....and the WHOis is showing this thing was registered in 2010....what?!!

Click to expand...

Then your domain was not available when you looked at it the 1st time.

No comment, just a tiny pic:

Haha now that's funny as crap!

Gyuman82 said:

Click to expand...

Look up domain tasting and this should explain what you want to know.

I never liked godaddy, always hated the 100 pages of addons to buy for your domain before you can pay

As innocent_kid said, I've found Godaddy to have some bugs when showing availability of domains, but what you say exists and is called Domain name front running (sorry, can't link to Wikipedia entry).

lewwy789 said:

This happened to me, a guy who goes by name king bought a domain i had been looking at the day before then he put it up for $1800.
When i checked him out it seems he does this for a living, he somehow checks what domains have been searched for, buys the good ones and hopes you buy it off him for a silly price. He has 1000's of domains.

Click to expand...

Does he go by the name king.net? I sold a domain to a guy going by that handle back in 2006!

Entirely possible, I had something similar happen to me on a few occasions, one time the domain I looked up was pretty obscure so doubtful someone registered it within 24 hours of me looking it up and it being available.

Whoa that is some serious underhanded business practice man...I mean if it's true...then again, there are a lot of factors for it.

This happened to me like 4-5 times and they didn't have to wait for the next day to get the dmain , THEY DID IT DURING THE CHECKOUT , and the whois lookup showed the the domain is registered the same day ive done the search , and yeah they were registered with GD . I remember one of the domain i searched was payoneer.info