Last night, I noticed I had a domain name on hold in my Afternic account, but the domain name did not appear in my GoDaddy account. I know that GoDaddy pulls domain names from accounts when they are pending sale, but the disconcerting thing was that I could not find a purchase receipt or any ownership record for this domain name.

I called the Premier Services team at GoDaddy, and I was able to put a few things together. The domain name that is pending sale was hand registered by me in January of 2025. Because I registered it in a bulk purchase, the domain name was not included in the purchase receipt I received. It was also renewed in bulk on the first anniversary, so I did not have a renewal email either. These are standard records I generally have quick access to in my email history. In addition, new registrations have Whois privacy at GoDaddy, so a Whois record didn’t confirm my ownership of the domain name.