It’s not just bad for GoDaddy. It also adds to the frontrunning narrative.
Domain investor Nikul Sanghvi recently posted a video on X showing an issue with GoDaddy’s domain search. When he searched for the word fusion, GoDaddy showed that the .com was taken, but offered the domain in many other extensions that are also registered:
It’s easy to replicate this with other common words. When I search for candy.com, the “Great Alternative” suggested is candy.io, which is obviously already registered. So are other options suggested, including candy.tv. In fact, that’s a premium domain in the Afternic network.
Another X user noted that when you search for megaverse, you’re told it’s not available, but GoDaddy suggests you register metaverse.com instead.
It’s common for domain registrars to use cached availability lists to return results faster with fewer resources. But in this case, it appears GoDaddy isn’t even checking.
Once a user clicks to register one of the unavailable names, they get a message that it isn’t available. This isn’t just a bad user experience; it creates credibility issues. And that’s detrimental to the entire industry.
Many end users search for available domains but don’t register them right away. Once they settle on a domain, they come back to the registrar to get the domain.
When they then find out the domain is taken, they think the registrar or someone engaged in frontrunning – they somehow sniffed their domain search to register the domain themselves.
So many people complain about this that GoDaddy recently started alerting customers that it does not do this.
The registrar spent the tech resources to add this reputable search alert, but then it creates fodder for the narrative of frontrunning by telling people that domains are available when they aren’t.
I hope GoDaddy fixes its search. Not just for the sake of its own customers, but also for the reputation of the industry.
Source: https://domainnamewire.com/
