Is GoDaddy registering domain names after availability lookup? Dubbed ‘Front Running’, some people say it has been going on for 10 years. I can neither confirm or deny, so I will post both sides of the debate.

Confirm

The first question you may have is why do some registrars do front running? It’s simple really. It’s about the money. For the registrar, it means you cannot purchase the domain name anywhere else, and the registrar can charge a premium knowing you are interested. Both videos below describe how both persons lost the domain when running a search.  Both videos also feature a cat. Just ignore that part.

Deny

Written by a community manager at Godaddy.

I can understand how you might come to that conclusion, but this is something that GoDaddy has never done and will never do. To clarify, if you see that a domain is registered through GoDaddy, it does not mean that GoDaddy is the owner of the domain, simply the registrar. If you see Domains By Proxy mentioned in the domain’s WHOIS information under Registrant, that means that it is a GoDaddy customer using our Protected Registration service.

Most often, this issue arises when a customer searches for a domain and we provide cached information about whether or not the domain is registered. This is done to speed up the process. However, this information is typically double checked if you actually add the domain to your shopping cart. Even then, sometimes the information we get from the registry can be incorrect and the domain is actually not available, even though our search said it was. The best thing to do is to double check the WHOIS information for the domains in question. My guess would be that you’ll find the domains were actually registered before you did your search. If not, 3 weeks is definitely enough time for someone else (not GoDaddy) to register the domains.

Conclusion

I do not know the truth of the matter, but for the last 10 years I have not used Godaddy nor Network Solutions for that matter. Both registrars have been accused of front running. I do not trust my searching for new domain names with either company. It’s better to do a whois query.

Anyway, Godaddy was once my main registrar, but I moved my domains to Crazy Domains. Why? Because the price was much cheaper. I moved them again to Cloudflare who charge the wholesale rate. Cloudflare is not only the cheapest domain registrar today, but they have the best tools for domain records. You also get the added bonus of a free and sophisticated content delivery network (CDN) if you decide to host a website using your new domain name.