
Was Godaddy Caught Registering Domains Names After Availability Lookup? - pier0
http://www.billhartzer.com/pages/godaddy-caught-registering-domains-after-availability-lookup/
======
programminggeek
This proves nothing.

They say they aren't front running and never have, and yet how many times have
people looked up a domain on GoDaddy only to have it registered minutes or
hours later by a GoDaddy account.

That doesn't mean that GoDaddy itself is doing this, but their employees
certainly could be, or they could sell domain query data to a 3rd party to
keep their hands clean. Some Godaddy employees certainly have access to the
data of who is looking for what.

It would not be hard at all to have an algorithm that looks that those domains
for dictionary words and possibly look at Google keyword search volume on each
one and only buy the ones that pass some minimum criteria. That would be
smarter than Network Solutions and harder to prove.

I personally stopped doing domain lookups on GoDaddy because they would
register domains I didn't pull the trigger on fast enough and I've been moving
domains away from them as well.

Just because some VP says they don't do it doesn't mean they aren't lying or
there isn't some low level tech or manager who isn't doing this on their own.

~~~
gghootch
This phenomenon is disgusting. Happened to me for a thirteen-letter domain
name with fairly low search popularity. I presumed this was one of the reasons
why Godaddy is considered evil. Nowadays the domain is parked @
domainbrokers.com

If a 3rd party is involved, shouldn't we move to stop Godaddy from providing
this information to them? If it is a case of rogue employees domain squatting,
shouldn't Godaddy act to put a halt to this practice?

~~~
vijayr
This _is_ disgusting, but everything is fair in love, war and business :(

I don't think any domain registrar will willingly _not_ do it. There should be
some kind of law, that makes this practice illegal - both the registrar doing
it themselves, and giving the data to others so they could do it. In fact,
there should be a law prohibiting the sale, sharing or even saving of this
data completely. If I search for a domain at a registrar's site, that
shouldn't be logged _anywhere_.

Not directly related, but - it would be nice if there is a law that says "any
domain name can be sold only for a maximum of 10 dollars" - that would prevent
the disgusting domain squatters. It would upset those who spent millions
already, but it might have some affect on the future squatting of domains.

~~~
saraid216
> This is disgusting, but everything is fair in love, war and business :(

Um, no. That's not true. Sending armed men into your competitor's retail store
to trash the place and scare off customers is not "fair". This is also why,
among other reasons, it's illegal.

------
bg_info_guy
Previous discussion/accusation here (~ 2 years ago):
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2326790>

ICANN investigated (generally, not godaddy specifically) 3 years ago, no
evidence was found:
<http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090807/0048175795.shtml>

GoDaddy's own support background here:
[http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-
wi...](http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/you-can-trust-go-daddy-with-your-
domain-searches/)

The current CEO of GoDaddy is not Bob Parsons (the "elephant hunter"). GoDaddy
was sold to a group of investors this year and Parsons stepped down shortly
after:
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230458400457642...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304584004576420372308902058.html)

Warren Adelman took over for Parsons last year, followed by current CEO Scott
Wagner who took over this month as interim CEO:
[http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/godaddy-ceo-steps-down-
scot...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/30/godaddy-ceo-steps-down-scott-wagner-
named-interim-ceo/)

------
zupreme
This is a very interesting discussion. I've been flipping domain names as a
side-biz for years and I've had ALOT of discussions with other guys who say
that GoDaddy sniped a domain from them. In some cases the people have checked
on 3rd party sites (like NS), found that the domain was available, then went
to Godaddy for cheaper registration only to have GD report that the domain is
unavailable. In a couple of instances guys would then go back to NS or their
other favorite registrar only to find that the domain was registered by
"Domains by Proxy", which is GoDaddy's anonymous registration
partner/subsidiary.

I haven't personally had it happen to me, but too many people I trust say that
it has happened to them for me to ignore it.

~~~
gojomo
GoDaddy is the largest registrar, and anyone can use their anonymyzation. So
'checking other sites' and THEN seeing that some anonymous someone registered
via GoDaddy provides little negative evidence against GoDaddy.

~~~
zupreme
I agree. You couldn't go to court with this type of evidence, but you have to
admit that for the site to be available, then within minutes of you searching
for it on GoDaddy, it then becoming anonymously registered would raise
eyebrows.

~~~
gojomo
But that scenario -- searching _only_ through GoDaddy (preferably HTTPS), and
seeing that domain gone minutes later -- is not described in the comment I
responded to. Nor in the parent linked article. Nor was it in the prior report
this article mentions.

And yet, even if that did happen, GoDaddy gets millions of registrations per
year, and many times that in lookups. So losing a domain minutes later is
certain to happen many times per year for strictly innocent/coincidental
reasons.

And some of the advice being given in these sorts of threads -- use DNS/whois
lookups, use other random website services -- could be _increasing_ the risk.
(Those protocols are eavesdroppable, those services have less to risk than
GoDaddy.)

------
barryrandall
Sorry guys, I'm pretty sure you're chasing ghosts. I was a development manager
there a few years ago, and they go to extremes to avoid anything that even
comes close to looking like this. The capability doesn't exist in their
software, and it would be a massive effort to enable it.

In high volume systems, low probability events happen very frequently.

~~~
jcrites
> The capability doesn't exist in their software, and it would be a massive
> effort to enable it.

What makes this a massive effort? I assume that GoDaddy has existing software
to register a domain name given the name, and some fixed configuration like
who should be listed as owner, contact, etc. So we need to call that logic,
passing as input each domain that has been searched for.

Upon every search for a domain name, enqueue the search term to a queue. (This
can happen e.g. after the page load completes.) The search results already
indicate whether the name is registered, so only write unregistered domains to
the queue.

Set up a fleet of workers to pull items from that queue and call the
functionality that registers a domain.

It seems feasible to have a basic prototype of this functionality operational
within a day or two of effort (e.g., a dumb implementation that simply
registers every search term that's a valid domain). I'm sure the production
version will need to be smarter, like not registering every single search, or
estimating the value of a prospect and only registering high-value prospects -
but wouldn't a basic flagrant implementation be fairly simple?

~~~
nivla
>What makes this a massive effort?

Well for one, if you have ever worked on a well established high traffic site,
even to add a "simple feature" without breaking something is not that simple.

Going with your logic: User Searching for a domain; Godaddy adds it to the
queue; Pulls out the domains one by one from the queue and registers it for
themselves. Although it might seem simple there are few flaws in it.

a) What happens if the user want to register the available domain, wait but we
already added it to our queue for automatic registration. So we need to check
if the user goes through with the registration or not.

b) We are going to make millions $ holding domains hostages. But since every
registration will cost goddaddy atleast $5.50 to ICANN and that there are
millions of searches of domains in a month, well it certainly is one way to
tank your company.

c) Alright lets then try to filter out only the popular domain name searches.
But how do we determine what is popular and what is not popular. Common words?
Trends? Hyphenation? Numbers? TLD? User Profiling?

d) Lets hold the domain hostage and make the user wait until they agree to
backorder it from us. That will always work out for user retention.

Given that I used to own a lot of domains from Godaddy, I can attest to the
fact that they have much simpler ways to hold your domains hostage if they
wanted to. For example: When a domain is about to expire, the sheer volume of
emails you get from Godaddy reminding you to renew is outright annoying. If
they had to score better money, cut it down to just one and sent them about 4
weeks before the expiration. When most people forget to do it, go ahead and
charge them $80 to get it back from redemption!!

------
apawloski
Am I just missing the sarcasm in this article? How on earth is "We can now
honestly say that Godaddy is not involved with domain name 'front running'" a
reasonable conclusion from that one sentenced email? The sender is someone
we'd _expect_ to deny this.

 __Edit: __The author has since edited the post. The part I quote was a direct
copy-paste of the last sentence from the original version. He's since made a
half-hearted attempt to qualify this.

~~~
kevincennis
"Can we now..." not "We can now". It's a rhetorical question, not an
assertion.

~~~
apawloski
He's since edited it. My initial post was a direct quote.

------
pbhjpbhj
Back in 2008 I did a test on a couple of sites. I found that Easily.co.uk
claimed a made up domain name
"nobodywantsadomainnamewithlotsofnumbers1231891904817401" - used as a one time
test string for this registrar alone - was already taken on 3 TLDs (I've got a
screenshot saved) ... the chances of that being a random collision seem pretty
low.

------
grassclip
Very appropriate in this situation:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_Law_of_Headlines>

~~~
damian2000
+1 came here to say the same thing.

------
fiddle
Recently, I was checking whois for a 5-letter domain which had just expired.
It was available, but seconds after I checked it with Godaddy's whois (checked
the update timestamp), it was taken by Domains By Proxy, LLC (Godaddy's
company). So for anyone checking this out, consider they may only do it with
recently expired domains or short domains.

They may also turn off this code if this blows up in public.

~~~
pgrote
They offer a domain snapping service, so if something expired they might have
bought it for a customer.

------
tholman
Pretty poor investigative journalism in my opinion... No testing, or planning
to scope them out... just one email, and he can "honestly say" that they don't
do it. Weak.

------
binarysolo
The better question: does GoDaddy offer data services that allow other parties
to check anonymized domain availability search histories?

------
samstave
Even worse, godaddy will routinely pick available domains and mark them as
"premium" domains and hold them hostage for outrageous prices.

They are not selling them on behalf of anyone - they, the registrar, are
illegally marking them up.

~~~
1123581321
Sincerely, why do you think it illegal? Aren't they allowed to speculatively
register domains to resell?

Please understand this is a sincere question. I'm asking because I think it's
legal. If it's illegal, I want to know about that, and especially how the law
might view a register's squatting and an individual's squatting differently.

Edit: Just so it's clear, by "register" I mean truly register the domain for a
year -- not "taste" it for a few days and then cancel the registration, if
that is even still allowed.

------
datums
This has been happening for many years now. They sell the stream to other
companies who register the domain for a few days for free. They stamp the for
sale page on it and wait, drop it and maybe register it again.

------
donohoe
I have had two domains, months apart (back in 2009?), that I looked-up via
GoDaddy and then were gone the next day when I went to register.

These were obscure names, one with numbers.

This is just my experience, could be plain bad luck/timing. However at the
time I wondered about this (nice to know it has an actual term) - emailed them
angrily and got a placating response.

This makes me reconsider.

------
j45
This absolutely happens. Only with GoDaddy? Not sure.

I have searched for some obscure domains in unpopular niches (imagine
<extremely obscure keyword><extremely rare/popular suffix>.com> to find them
registered mysteriously 24 hours later to someone on.. you guessed it.. Go
daddy. This has happened enough times to me that I now only search for domains
after I login into the control panel at the domain provider I use.

Many domain/whois tools do the same things.

My semi-educated guess is all searches are queued, sorted by popular keywords,
and most likely hand picked off by an official employee, or someone who may
have access to the data.

OTOH, I'm surprised no one has done a honeypot experiment to catch this type
of behaviour in the act.

------
isalmon
I had EXACTLY this situation with GoDaddy earlier this year. I was looking for
a good domain name, found it (intelface.com), but decided to sleep on it. Next
morning it was gone. I know you can't prove anything, but it looked very
suspicious at that time.

------
juan_juarez
Why is anyone relying on a 3rd party to check domain availability? You can do
DNS lookups and whois searches from the comfort of your own machine. There's
no need to let anyone else know you're interested until you're actually ready
to pull the trigger.

~~~
gojomo
That might be more dangerous. If you trust GoDaddy, and do a search in an
HTTPS session with them, there's little risk a third-party could learn of your
interest/idea and snap up the name.

OTOH, dns and whois are unencrypted protocols. Eavesdroppers could see your
lookups. Depending on which DNS or WHOIS servers you are consulting, their
administrators may be untrustworthy. For example, many whois installations
default to asking NetworkSolutions, who at one point (2008) was definitely
front-running by their own admission.

------
alohahacker
This once happened to me about 2 years ago. I got furious and called up
godaddy wanting to talk to someone that could give me an answer. They said we
don't buy domains but when a domain is looked up on our website sometimes it
is publicly available and sometimes other people end up buying them on
speculation.

I searched for the domain godaddysucksbigbigballs.com multiple times and it
ended up being taken after 10 mins.

I assume that since there was a grace period where people could simply drop a
domain and get a refund after a couple days that squaters somehow obtained the
information and weree buying domains that people were searching in hoping to
profit.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
Searching for some made-up names on GoDaddy. Will check them tommorow.

* now-why-would-they-register-such-an-obscure-domain-122828178327

* now-why-would-they-register-such-an-obscure-domain-211278327

* now-why-would-they-register-such-an-obscure-domain-218398211

~~~
wpietri
You might have to try a larger number of things that would score higher in
terms of domain value. If I were front-running, I might concentrate on domains
that were likely to have resale value beyond the original purchaser.

Also, given that GoDaddy is being accused of this right now, they'd be smart
to stop any front-running for a few weeks.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Yep.

They weren't taken today.

------
ninetax
Yet again an article that fulfils Betteridge's Law of Headlines[1].

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_Law_of_Headlines>

------
ekanes
One point of data, this has happened to me personally with GoDaddy.

------
gddr
Isn't that something you could investigate and prove? Look up 1000 randomly-
generated domains from different IPs, check later if any of them are
registered, done.

~~~
jorgem
I suspect they would only register names that look somewhat "good". There are
plenty of automated ways to valuate domain names -- then just pick the
unregistered ones that exceed some value.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
You _could_ run a list of available domain names from a domain name suggestion
service as lookups using an automated system. You'd want a botnet to avoid
getting your IP blocked.

Wasn't the problem that the registrars could retain the domain names without
having to pay for a few days? I thought that ICANN had addressed it but am
pretty hazy on that point.

------
SeanDav
Probably not a strong case for OP, but in any case GoDaddy is evil and should
be avoided in all shapes and forms. A bit of Googling will show why.

------
silentific
I'm shocked that anyone is surprised that this still happens. The author
claims he broke the news in 2008, but NetSol has been doing this for a very
long time. I remember using a service that let you do wild card domain
searches before going anywhere near a registrar. "Domain Surfer", I believe.
These days I just pull the trigger instantly when I find an available domain.
Pull the trigger!

------
loeschg
I could have sworn this happened to me. I looked up my own name (.com) one
day, and it was available. I checked back a week or so later, and it was
taken.

I monitored the domain for a year and saw no activity. At the end of a year it
became available, and I snagged it at a base price. Seemed like too much of a
coincidence. I don't have that common of a name. I can't prove anything
though.

~~~
mcantelon
Happened to me as well. I can't remember if it was Godaddy or some other web
lookup, but now I only ever use CLI tools to do domain lookups.

------
Limes102
This has happened to me a couple of times, but it doesn't prove that GoDaddy
are the ones who are actually registering them.

------
LouLang
Wouldn't it be trivial to perform some sort of analysis on this? That is,
write a script to test an appropriately sized sample for domain availability.
Then after some predetermined time, check the availability again. I'd imagine
if GoDaddy is registering domains, then we'd find that our data was
statistically significant.

------
subrat_rout
Back in 2009 and 2010 when I was a novice (And I am still consider myself as a
novice)in the field of web development, I do not remember how many times I
have searched for a domain name (with a scientific terminology in it) to find
that it is available but gone after few days and parked on a place such as
Sedo.

------
harel
Its quite easy to do a sting operation on them to prove the practice. I
searched for a random domain name now. Silly name: YABODABODOODIDA.com. Took
screenshots of the search and its availability. Lets see in a couple of days
who owns this domain name.... Then rinse, and repeat the process...

------
jakeonthemove
Well, I'm glad I don't use GoDaddy - I'm always paranoid when searching for a
domain name, though - if I find a good one, I tend to register it right away
out of fear that it might be taken right after the search. Guess there's some
truth to that.

------
n0mad01
I had such an presumption many years ago with another Registrar. My guess is
that they check manually all searched (yet free) domains and register the best
ones after a while, it wouldn't even surprise me if this is the standard.

------
bbayer
İ personnally experienced those kind of issues with GoDaddy and this was the
main reason of switching to name.com. They don't front running all domains but
I believe they do for some keywords which is relatively valuable

------
soapdog
This happened to me. I checked if a domain was available, it was, I went out
of the house to tell my friend. We went back to register it and it was gone.

damn!

Now, I just use whois from the terminal.

------
Wingman4l7
Isn't this domain tasting?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_tasting>

~~~
Wingman4l7
Or maybe it's domain name "front running":

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_front_running>

------
damian2000
With the massive amount of backlash they got from SOPA, I seriously doubt
whether they would be doing this sort of thing.

------
Natsu
Let's test this.

WECHEATPEOPLEOUTOFDOMAINSFORFUNANDPROFITANDWEHATEKITTENSTOO.COM is available.
Just $12.99*

I wonder how long that will stay available?

------
antonios
I'm just another soul that experienced the same despicable behavior from
GoDaddy. Far too many coincidences, I say.

------
jgh
Hell, GoDaddy didn't even bother registering my domain after availability
lookup. They waited until I paid for it and then 6 months later parked the
domain with their bullshit. I never changed any settings or anything, and yet
if you go to my domain, all you see is GoDaddy's bullshit.

~~~
bryans
I'm not one to defend GoDaddy, but it sounds like you just never did anything
with it. If you don't point the domain to a hosting account or change the
nameservers, GoDaddy always displays the parked domain page by default. You
can turn it off in your account settings if you want.

~~~
tokenizer
When I used GoDaddy they automatically park your domain until you configure
the nameservers like you said. This is the most likely explanation of his/her
account.

~~~
jgh
No. That is not the explanation.

------
ortusdux
Could someone with an amazon turk requester account please test this?

------
franzus
Hmm, I can only speak from my experience where I checked domains with GD and
when I came back one week later to register them I was greeted with a "this
domain has been registered. but you can buy it for $50"-type message.

This was around 2003 and since then I'm avoiding godaddy.

------
ktizo
Yet another reason to bookmark <http://geektools.com>

