GoDaddy Still Not Frontrunning Domain Searches (Updated)

There’s a trending post on Hacker News that accuses GoDaddy of front running domain names that are searched for on its website:

“searched a few days ago for felons.io, looked for unique names for simple game didn’t know if I wanted it or not
guess godaddy decided for me: 1 days old Created on 2020-09-16 by GoDaddy.com, LLC

just a warning if you have a special name do not use godaddy to check if its available”

I did a Whois search to see if I could see the registrant of the domain name, and while the H/N thread starter is correct in that the domain name was just registered yesterday at GoDaddy, it does not appear to be registered by GoDaddy. Although GoDaddy redacts most Whois information, I am able to see that the registrant is based in New York. GoDaddy is based in Arizona. There does not appear to be Whois privacy enabled.

From what I can see, it does not look like the domain name is listed for sale via GoDaddy or its network. If it were, there would be a “for sale” notice along with the asking price on the domain name search results page pictured below. The domain name is not resolving to a functioning website either.

GoDaddy has responded to accusations of front running in the past. I wrote articles in 2017 and 2012 in response to learning about frontrunning accusations lodged against GoDaddy.

After reading the trending Hacker News thread, I reached out to GoDaddy to make sure the company policy has not changed since the last time I covered this topic. GoDaddy Registrar Vice President, Paul Bindel shred the following statement with me today:

“GoDaddy never has and never will register domain names based on customer searches. This is an unethical and predatory practice that runs counter to our mission of helping people bring their ideas to life online with the best possible domain name.”

Update (September 18): GoDaddy published a blog post this evening about Felons.io, the domain name that was mentioned in the Hacker News thread. According to the blog post, GoDaddy’s “fraud team flagged the transaction as fraudulent.” As a result, the domain name is going to be deleted, and it will become available again to register at some point in the very near future.

I still believe what GoDaddy says – the company does not buy / register domain names that were searched by customers. There are probably millions of searches every month, and the volume of domain names that would be registered would be very large. In addition, it would be a massive scandal if the allegations proved to be true, especially considering the company has publicly called this practice “predatory,” and “unethical.”

The unfortunate thing is that the coverage generated by the Hacker News post will probably put this domain name on the radar of many people, and it will likely be snapped up pretty quickly.

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

8 COMMENTS

  1. The SEC,The DOJ and the Trump’s Administration need to investigate this shady business practice.

    Regards,
    BullS
    MBA,PhD
    Magna cum laude
    Graduate of Domain King Academy

    MBA-My Big Ass(all of you have one)
    PHD-people having dickheads

  2. The SEC,The DOJ and the Trump’s Administration need to investigate this shady business practice.

    Regards,
    BullS
    MBA,PhD
    Magna cum laude
    Graduate of Domain King Academy

    MBA-My Big Ass(all of you have one)
    PHD-people having dickheads

  3. In that thread, they accuse them but, frankly, there is no evidence whatsoever that GoDaddy actually bought that domain.

    If the domain is under not under privacy, isn’t there supposed to be some info on the WHOIS record, though? No registrant name, organization, just a city (New York)? Or, like you said, is GoDaddy just witholding that info?

  4. Because of the risk of things like that, it’s usually never a good idea to use any registrar’s domain search feature *unless* you are prepared to immediately register what you are looking for (if it is something you consider valuable of course). Or any potentially conflicted entity’s search feature.

  5. This is so ridiculous to say the least, GoDaddy owns one of the largest portfolios with huge inventory of really valuable domains that for sure the internet will disappear for something different before they sell all their inventory and somebody thinks that they need to front run them to their incredible ultra valuable premium hand reg domain, now I know GD needs to start selling common sense and Covid-19 Virus protection with each domain registration! Go for it.

  6. It would make sense that it recently got registered being a .io, given the domaining attention on the extension over the last few weeks.

    The “next rung down” of available names would be getting registered so people could easily find a name they were looking at is suddenly gone. “Felons” sounds like one of those mediocre type names that is probably going right about now.

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