At least a couple of times a year, I am either emailed by someone who thinks GoDaddy is front running their attempted domain name registrations or I am sent a link to this type of accusation on social media. While front running was an issue many years ago, I am pretty confident it doesn’t happen any longer at any sort of scale, particularly at large domain registrars like GoDaddy. There are too many reasons why registrar front running doesn’t make sense.
I want to highlight something I just experienced that could easily look like front running to someone without domain name industry knowledge. It is definitely not front running, but it could appear that way to someone who just wants to buy a single domain name at GoDaddy.
If you have .XYZ or .IO domain names listed for sale on Afternic, you probably received emails with the subject: “Opt-in to the Afternic Premium Network.” Last night, I received 31 of these emails from Afternic because I own 31 .XYZ domain names that are listed for sale on Afternic. In addition, I received several corresponding “Action required: Authorize your domain listings.” emails from GoDaddy.