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Local Domains Suddenly Grabbed Up

by CurtisSWN
9 replies
I've not yet fully taken the plunge into offline marketing, but I've been researching domains and searches. I live in the St Paul-Minneapolis area, and there used to be a lot of "local search" domains available like StPaulPlumber, MortgagebrokerMinneapolis, etc

Now all of a sudden those domains are taken. I get the sneaking suspicious that someone at GoDaddy is monitoring all the domain searches and if you wait too long someone is going to "coincidentally" have taken it....if you know what I mean.

Of course I can just try to rank with a modified domain such as beststpaulplumber com, etc; but has anyone experienced this?

Curtis
#domains #grabbed #local #suddenly
  • Profile picture of the author misc92
    I have a similar theory. Since GoDaddy is automated the system could determine when a unusual number of searches for the same domain occur and grab them for reselling.
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  • Profile picture of the author tonyscott
    If you check back after 4 or 5 days, you'll usually find that they are available again. I use namecheap to check availability, they don't pull this stunt.

    Tony
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    • Profile picture of the author bookchiq
      Originally Posted by tonyscott View Post

      If you check back after 4 or 5 days, you'll usually find that they are available again.
      I used to run into this with GoDaddy and just like Tony said, they'll often become available again in five days thanks to what's called "domain tasting" (the domain can be "returned" and the registration fee refunded for up to five days). It's an easy way for anyone who has reason to believe a domain might become popular to verify whether that's the case, and at no cost.

      After having my searches get registered and released fairly regularly, I switched search tools. I currently use DomainTyper, which hasn't ever had this problem, and is faster and easier to boot.
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  • Profile picture of the author reboot38
    Try bustaname.com - really efficient, free, and you automatically get your godaddy .com's @ $7.65
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    Snoop on your competitors, research keywords, run seo audits, monitor keywords, includes powerful PPC tools.
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    • Profile picture of the author enterpryzman
      I have been buying domains for 10 years and I quit doing searches at the registrar for the most part. I always search via a site like domaintools and then take the available domains and copy the list into the bulk buy box and do an instant purchase at my registrar.

      When I am wanting a certain domain, I also will use my bulk purchase feature at eNom and even if it is only one domain, I will list it in the box and buy it ( instant ) RATHER than search for it any place.

      I have had times in years past that I have sat searching for hours and listed available domains for later reg. and in a day or two found them unavailable. When I then do a whois, they had just been reg'd.

      Regards,
      Enterpryzman
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  • Profile picture of the author TKB
    offline marketing has its pros and cons..you gotta look deeper into it..
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  • Profile picture of the author redcell1
    Has anyone else thought - you are not the only one looking for that local domain ?

    I am not saying that some times domain registrations have been sketchy (Happened to me a few times) but do you really not think anyone else is not looking for a aged local domain as well as you?
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    Just here to see the shenanigans.

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  • Profile picture of the author GeorgeO7
    Godaddy has been sniping domains for years. I lost 2 primo domains after searching there... went back the next day to purchase just to find GD snatched them up. I moved all my domains to Namecheap and have not run into that issue since... that was about 8 years ago.
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  • Profile picture of the author mark01234
    Example Case Study:
    • Local Domain Hound helped find a common business term that, when combined with one particular city name, gets 49,000 Phrase-match and 201,000 Broad-match Searches per month.
    • None of the domain names containing this keyword are taken.
    • The largest 15 US cities each get over 12,000 Phrase-match and 50,000 Broad-match searches every month in combination with this term.
    • Only 5 of the possible 60 domain names are taken.
    • Four of these five domains point to parking pages.
    • Out of 200 domain names formed from this term combined with the 50 largest US city names (both hyphenated and non-hyphenated), only 27 of them are taken.
    • Over 80% of the taken domain names point to parking pages,making it very easy to out-rank them in the search engine search results. (Parking pages represent very low competition!)
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