GoDaddy announced some news today that will be helpful to non-domain investor customers. GoDaddy announced a new tool that “makes it easy to sell unused domain names.” Instead of having to list domain names for sale via Afternic or on another platform, GoDaddy customers can more easily list their domain names for sale directly within their account. This should help people sell their domain names.
While this tool is almost certainly aimed at GoDaddy customers who are not domain investors, it could also be very helpful to domain investors looking to purchase inventory. The trouble, for me at least, is GoDaddy’s search functionality is not very good. I can not easily run a search of domain names for sale via GoDaddy that meet certain parameters. For instance, I would immediately run a search for one word .com domain names, and if I wanted to be a bit fancy, I might only include domain names created before 1999.
Throughout the years, I have pestered my account reps and others at GoDaddy to try to get lists of one word .com domain names. Even GoDaddy employees, as far as I know, do not have the ability to quickly generate lists of domain names with even simple searches like one word .coms.
To remedy this to a smaller degree, I have been using ExpiredDomains.net to search for listings on GoDaddy. I have come to really appreciate this tool, but I know it is not able to search all of the inventory listed on the GoDaddy platform.
I have no idea how much money GoDaddy could be leaving on the table without this functionality. My guess is it is a big number, but I also think it is a small number compared to its overall sales figures. Most buyers search for a specific domain name or keyword on GoDaddy, and they are given similar types of domain names based on GoDaddy’s algorithm.
If GoDaddy were to introduce a more robust search tool in conjunction with this new sales listing tool, I think domain investors and non-investors would both benefit, as would GoDaddy. Because this search functionality has not been introduced, I have to think there is a bigger reason for excluding it, but I really don’t know.
