I received an email from GoDaddy this afternoon telling me a domain name had been canceled. The email either means I let a domain name expire or one of my names sold and transferred out of my GoDaddy account. I was sure the name was not canceled, but when I logged in to my GoDaddy account to see what was going on, I encountered this error: “504 Gateway Time-out”.

I called my account representative who told me the 504 errors was something other customers are experiencing, and GoDaddy’s Twitter account confirmed this as well:

Last week, I wrote about a prospective buyer whose offer was made based on a GoDaddy appraisal. After the opening offer was made, I think I was able to make a pretty salient rebuttal to his offer. Although he ended up increasing his offer to a more reasonable number, we were unable to reach a deal. I won’t say the appraisal is what doomed the deal, but it did set the discussion off on a bad note for me.

Sometimes a low appraisal isn’t the issue. There have been other times when someone cited an appraisal that was more than I believe the domain name is worth.

According to my Registrant Alert emails from DomainTools over the past couple of days, it appears that GoDaddy may have sold a small portfolio of generic one and two word .com domain names from its NameFind portfolio. The domain names below were previously registered to NameFind, and the registrant information changed to GoDaddy’s Whois privacy service, Domains By Proxy, LLC. I have not seen NameFind use Whois privacy on its domain names before, so I presume the domain names below have been sold.

Here are the valuable generic domain names with a registrant change I noticed over the past two days:

GoDaddy’s automated appraisal tool is a double edged sword, and my affection for it varies depending on whether I am buying or selling a domain name. Put simply, when it comes to unique assets, I don’t think an automated tool can accurately value a domain name. People do use the appraisal tool though, so it is something investors need to keep in mind.

This morning, I received a $1,500 offer to buy a two word .com domain name I acquired via auction earlier this year. In passing on the offer, I told the prospective buyer my domain name is worth more than $1,500. He replied asking me the value of the domain name and told me he based his offer on the GoDaddy appraisal: