3 Things GoDaddy Should Do to Reassure Auction Customers

For the past few days, I have been digesting the news about a GoDaddy employee bidding on GoDaddy Auctions. As I wrote on Thursday evening, the news is disappointing. In the article revealing the discovery, Paul Nicks wrote, “We are also reviewing platform changes to make things even more transparent.” After thinking about this, I think there are three things GoDaddy should do to be transparent and reassure customers that GoDaddy Auctions is a fair auction platform.

Before I get to the three action items I think GoDaddy should take, I think I should my understanding of what happened based on what Paul shared in his article and subsequent comments. If I am incorrectly interpreting things, my feedback might change.

It sounds to me like an employee was also involved in domain investing and was bidding on auctions (“This was not a “bad guy”. He was an employee that loved the space as much as any investor.”). Bidding is against company policy and has been against the rules for years. From what I understand, the bidding was not done to generate revenue for GoDaddy by driving up prices, nor was it done to achieve any type of bonus for hitting revenue numbers. It was done because an employee was trying to buy domain names in auction.

Although it sounds like the employee was using the same type of on-site bidding as customers and did not have access to private bidder information (proxy bidders or who was bidding), the employee could have had information about what domain names were selling via Afternic or GoDaddy Auctions, what domain names were bought and sold by customers, and other information that a third party would probably not possess. Even though this probably isn’t rigging the system, I think there is a very narrow border here and depending on the person’s role and access to customer data, it doesn’t sit well with me. I would not want a GoDaddy employee to see a sale of mine and use this information I consider private to bid against me and buy domain names I want to own. I don’t know if this happened, but I don’t know it did not happen either.

One thing that I keep thinking about is that this is a very difficult thing to guard against. Sure, GoDaddy can tell employees they can’t bid on auctions, but it seems like it could be very difficult to prevent an employee from starting an outside company or working with a friend or family member to set up an outside company and participate in auctions. It’s easy to say “don’t do it,” but it can be difficult to actually ensure nobody is breaking company policy.

All that said, there are three things I think GoDaddy should do to reassure customers:

Hire an outside consulting firm to investigate. I have known Paul Nicks for several years, and I trust what he says. I trust that the company investigated this and reported accurately. I will continue to bid on auctions. I could be in the minority though. I would bet there are a lot of people in the domain investment community who are more concerned about this than I am, and I think an outside investigation will clear things up and offer additional reassurances. I also think people should know if they were bid up in auctions and offer some sort of refund or opportunity to give the name back if that was the case. From my perspective though, I care more about the names I may have lost (and the lost opportunity from those names) than I care about additional money I paid. At least I think I do without knowing actual figures. I don’t know if anything can be done about lost opportunities.

Add bidder nicknames or other tracking. I want to be able to see who I am bidding against to ensure it’s a legitimate bidder. I don’t typically bid on non-expiry names and I am confident nobody is shill bidding to help the house, but I think this would offer reassurance on an ongoing basis.

Publish the full GoDaddy employee policy about bidding on auctions. I think it is probably clear, but GoDaddy should publish a follow-up article with specific information about what GoDaddy employees can and can not do when it comes to GoDaddy auctions. This should also specify the penalty for breaking the house rules. In addition, to the extent it can reveal the information, GoDaddy should discuss what steps it takes to make sure employees are not bidding on domain names in auction.

I do not think GoDaddy Auctions is rigged. I do believe the GoDaddy employee bidding was not doing so to generate revenue for the company or to get a bonus for hitting a revenue target. I do think the employee was probably trying to buy domain names for investment reasons. This has been against the rules and the company dealt with it internally. I think GoDaddy should take the steps if it wants to be more transparent.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

13 COMMENTS

  1. Very good points. I would like to suggest one more.

    How about not allowing a new bidder to bid on a name in the last five minutes of the auction.

    • I disagree. I have already provided the verbatim section from our employee handbook on what is considered allowable aftermarket activity for employees. I also have instructed our engineering team to scope various changes to how we display bidder information. I think a compromise exists that will provide far more transparency while still protecting the anonymity of bidders while an auction is active.

      • There is really no need to give bidders anonymity during an active auction. I think GoDaddy’s resistance to having visible bidder aliases during the auction is purely profit motivated. It has nothing to do with transparency or privacy protection.

        If protecting bidder’s identity truly the motivation behind keeping bidders anonymous during an auction, implement bidding aliases that are visible during auctions and offer free whois privacy to auction winners. Give them a chance to select it before the domain is transferred to them after the auction.

        This idea of making bidding aliases public after an auction is closed is nonsense. I agree with Elliot in that I want to know if I’m bidding against a legitimate bidder. I trust my research much more than GoDaddy’s in this area.

    • Not true, Page. We’re doing anything but hoping it’ll blow over. We will implement changes, and are in the process of trying to scope the complexity and understand the implications before be rush something out.

  2. Hey Elliot, I tweeted this out in a reply to an inquire by John Berryhill but realize that my twitter stream may not have *quite* the range as your blog so I’ll include it here as well.

    https://twitter.com/PaulENicks/status/1111759525827231744

    Here’s the part about bidding, “Do not bid on or purchase domain names through GoDaddy secondary domain market services, other than ‘Closeout’ or ‘Buy Now’ domains.” You can also see our Code of Conduct, which talks in depth about conflict of interest, on our IR page – https://aboutus.godaddy.net/investor-relations/governance/default.aspx

    • Maybe somewhere more visible (ie a GoDaddy blog post) that can be referenced in the future. I’ve had more than one person ask me about it and it would be nice to be able to point someone to GoDaddy’s website rather than a tweet or comment in the future.

  3. How about making public the name of employee or at least an email to account holders who he oir she was a rep for.

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