GoDaddy Updates Auction Landing Pages

It’s hard to believe it’s almost been a year since I discovered GoDaddy added valuations to expired domain auction landing pages.

Since that time, GoDaddy valuations have been met with mixed reviews depending on which side of the equation one finds themselves.

End users, those seeking to buy a domain to launch their business presence, have likely attempted to benifit from GoDaddy valuations and GoValue — GoDaddy’s Domain Name Appraisal Tool.

Meanwhile domain investors, those making a living flipping, developing, and investing in various domain classes, aren’t satisfied with inaccurate valuations based up incomplete sales data.

A few domain investors sense their domain negotiations have been tampered with due to customers using GoDaddy GoValue to justify their offer for desired domain(s).

In addition to GoDaddy valuations and GoValue, GoDaddy has overhauled it’s auction landing pages, adding a number of new features.

New Modernized Look and Layout

A much welcomed and long awaited user experience is the GoDaddy’s new auction landing pages.

From adding a domain to one’s Watchlist (upper right hand button with green text) to see real-time auction end date and countdown timer (upper left hand) to viewing estimated value to placing bids, this new interface is intuitive and quite easy to follow along with unlike the previous interface.

I personally like having all this information just before the fold, including the number of bidders and active bids.

The only thing I would like to see added before the fold is condensing a few attributes from the Details section — domain age, domain creation date, approximate delivery time.

The next section available for viewing is an Appraisal section. In my humble opinion, having this section doesn’t make much sense at all seeing that it’s included before the fold and above the bid history box. Seems like wasted real estate and opportunity to create a “less is more” experience.

Parking Statistics Debuts

I’m not too sure what to make of the Parking Statistics section, which supposedly contains estimated monthly pageviews and monthly revenue.

Per the Note within the section, pageviews and revenues are based on data collected over a 45-day period by GoDaddy.

As with Estimated Value (valuations), I wouldn’t give too much weight to this data in regards to determining the overall value of a domain name.

In my opinion, a 45-day period might not be a wide enough sample of time for a auctioned domain, especially if parking revenues are seasonal or cyclical.

Simplified Research Domain Data

If you’ve been around domain investing, then you’re likely familiar with using a number of tools to gauge a domain’s perceived value.

GoDaddy’s Research Domain section includes links for the SLD (second-level domain) via Google, Baidu, Yahoo, and Wikipedia.

Although a good start, GoDaddy has a way to go with this section.

For starters, GoDaddy must figure out how to make the SLD meaningful when providing search engine links.

For instance, say the domain EvenLoans.com is listed in expired auction.

When clicking the Google link in Research Domain section, Google displays the searched keyword as evenloans, which displays roughly 472K results.

However, when searching keyword as even loans, search results display roughly 394M results.

Yeah, those two results values are quite a bit different. This could ultimately alter the buying decision for end user or investor.

In addition, I recommend adding a Google Trends link to the Search by domain categorization.

It’s good having Archive.org and WHOIS, but it doesn’t make sense to link the domain since it’s in expired domain auction and not an actual customer-facing website.

Watcher Data Added Was Short-lived

Last December, I discovered GoDaddy added Watcher data to auction landing pages, rather were testing this new feature out.

It didn’t take long for the sirens to sound from the domain industry that adding Watcher data was not received well by the domain investing industry.

Closing Thoughts

GoDaddy has certainly improved its auction landing page experience leaps and bounds.

It’s not what it once was, but there is certainly room for more innovative improvements to be realized.

Speaking of improvements, I desparately wish for GoDaddy’s Investor App to remedy its notification no longer working — going on months now!

I also wish for the GoDaddy Investor App to allows for domain searching and watchlist addition.

Currently, those using the app must add expired domains to their watchlist via desktop for expired domains to be visible in the app to bid on.

Nevertheless, notifications seems like a remedial fix while search and watchlist addition are likely roadmap features.

In closing, let’s hope GoDaddy considers suggested recommendations for immediate implementation.

Thanks and that’s all for now!