GoDaddy domain appraisals now free. But you might get what you pay for.
GoDaddy recently started offering free computer generated domain name appraisals.
But before you get too excited, here are the results of a test I ran yesterday:
Hmm. I don’t think the algorithm is quite right.
For comparison, here are the computer generated estimates for these domains from Estibot:
IceCream.com $920,000
Money.com $5.8M
ReallyBadDomain.com $0
California.com $1.7M
Austin.com $2.8M
Now obviously Estibot isn’t perfect either, and some of these may be a bit generous. But they’re still much more in the neighborhood than the GoDaddy appraisals.
GoDaddy’s site says it bases its appraisals on factors such as “he domain name’s length, its number of words, its top-level domain name extension (.com, .net, .org, etc.), the presence of numbers or dashes in it, and its keyword popularity.”
To be fair, this appraisal system likely isn’t designed with super-premium domains in mind.
To try GoDaddy’s free appraisal tool, select “Domain Name Appraisals” from the “Auctions” drop down box.
i’ve come to the conclusion that there’s really no such thing as an accurate domain appraisal. i think the best that can be done is have twenty solid somainers put twenty domains in order of value from most to least valuable and work from there.
School.com is worth $1,007 to $1,870 by their tool. Methinks not! 🙂
Sex.com is $1,657 – $3,078, and insurance.com is $938 – $1,741.
Along with their patents for 30-click check-out technology, add this domain appraisal technology to GoDaddy’s world-class IP holdings. It combines appraisals with a built-in time machine, to give you a domain valuation for ….. 1993?
In 2006 I run a test and purchased an appraisal from all the main appraising services available. GoDaddy was the one who offered the worst appraisals! Apparently they don’t have improved their appraisals.
@RaTHeaD
It’s what GroupValuation.com proposed few years ago, and guess what, most of the valuations proposed by “domain experts” came in fact from Valuate/Estibot appraisals, it’s the same today in most domain places.
Now I let talk all the ones who will say again that it’s impossible to appraise a generic domain, that appraisals are worthless, …
According to GoDaddy…the domain name, Google.com is worth between $800 to $1,600
Interesting…..lol!
I wonder what they would evaluate their own website at.
@ francois… appraisals aren’t worthless… and i love estibot and valuate… they give a little clue toward the real value. but in the end the best option is in selling to the business that can make the most money with it. and that is often hard to determine.
I appraised these top domains
CreditCard.com $167-$502
Home.com $1,285-$2,387
and finally a domain we would like to appraise is
GoDaddy.com $805-$1,495
I think I should contact Godaddy.com and ask them if they are interested in selling Godaddy.com domain for their appraisal value…lol
verizon.com is only $814 – $1,512
I think my wife’s cell phone bill is about that a year.
You raise a valid point.
When Go Daddy launched the free appraisals, the first phase was designed to help the majority of people who buy/sell domain names on the aftermarket – the domain names which are less than $1,500. I think you would agree that if you had a premium generic domain name, you wouldn’t rely on a free appraisal to determine the value.
That being said, that doesn’t excuse the poor results. The algorithm we currently use is based on a learning model that utilizes our extensive repository of past sales in order to assign relative values of keywords within a domain. We feel using the data in this way is still the correct approach for the majority of domain appraisals (89% of our public sales last quarter were less than $1,500), but with “outlier” domain names, we don’t have good data or a large enough sample size.
We are working on a fast-follow deployment to the algorithm that attempts to reconcile the value of generic domains in light of the challenges of our sales data. To do so, we’ll be pulling in some relative word popularity scores from our N-Gram (very cool natural language processing/parsing) database for those domains that are generic enough that our sales data is insufficient.
There will certainly be additional quirks and challenges with the algorithm after the next release, but we will continue to improve it and make it available to our customers.
Thanks Andrew for bringing this to light, and to those who took the time to voice their opinion. I appreciate everyone’s input, feel free to comment here or email me directly (paul -at- GoDaddy) with further suggestions/concerns.
-Paul Nicks
GoDaddys latest scam… they gave no notice to customers if you bought 1 month prior or the day before they stopped selling these ‘certified appraisals’. Contacted them about this and they are not issuing any refunds. Disgusting.
Sounds great for buying domains on the cheap. Especially if Godaddy owns the domain, how could they ask more if they are handing out certificates that say the domain is worth X.
@Paul
Why always want invent the wheel?
Use Estibot appraisals, they also use your sales data in their algorythm, they have years of research and is the norm in the domaining industry.
Yes i would buy at that price but selling ……. well maybe not !
Estibot and.all automated appraisals are full of inaccuracies and inconsistencies. They lack validity and reliability. This is a fact, not opinion.
@Francois
While I like and respect the Estibot crew, I don’t see having multiple different appraisal options in the industry as being negative.
@Paul
No, if it’s of quality.
But if you don’t want to put the resources and time needed to create a robust appraisal service then maybe it should make sense to simply consider using the one that is a reference for years.
Obviously, this is a new marketing ploy by GoDaddy to become the “All-In-One” solution for domain purchases and web building. No doubt they will suck in numerous customers who are new or unfamiliar with the industry/business with this free “service”. We know better. But that does not mean this will not be an effective way of gaining uninitiated customers.
Automated appraisals will never be 100% accurate. Hell, NO appraisal will ever be. Of all the services out there, however, I like NowYo and Estibot. They provide other information that seems useful in valuating a domain (search volume, cpc, related sales, etc).
Great. As if we don’t get enough ignorant, low-ball offers from people who don’t have a clue.
Now we’ll get, ‘But GoDaddy’s appraisal says it’s only worth…’
Nick,
“Certified Appraisals” are not what Go Daddy is now offering for free. The appraisals we offer for free are what used to be called Express Appraisals. Certified Appraisals had a human’s input and not just the input of a computer algorithm to determine the value. We no longer offer Certified Appraisals.
Value is always subjective to people, to the measures they choose, and to the way they use the data. Only fools believe in objective value estimation. Value estimation is not science. Anyway, who cares what others think about what somebody would pay for a domain? It is with a domain as with anything else: If You want it, pay the asking price! Stop blaming the world it is not fair people making big money from a $11.95 investment. The terms Underpaying and Overpaying have been introduced by jealous people who try to sell all sorts of services related to domains to people that are desperate to sell. Who wants to spend money for third party opinions is free to do so, but value is personal. I’m not advising any more, but every time I read about value estimation, I must react. In my opinion, it is all worhtless, excepted for they who believe in it and those who sell valuations.
Methodology comes before factors. What is their methodology? Good methodology can handle premium domains reasonably because we have more sales data than few years ago.
@Francois
[..]”Why always want invent the wheel?
Use Estibot appraisals, they also use your sales data in their algorythm, they have years of research and is the norm in the domaining industry.”[..]
FoodForThought.com <– estibot value $120 :0
This is why estibot and the other automated appraisal services can not be utilized in domain marketplace sales stats "as the norm"
The idea that anyone could program an automated service that could take in on the subtle context required to make an accurate appraisal seems crazy.
There are so many variables that can not be calculated just by data that only the human mind can reason through something like that.
Kind of surprised to see godaddy put something out that is such crap.
hahaha. They estimated google.com and gmail.com for $1200.
Not even worth the click through to try it out by the looks of that test example.
Crud. I have about 10 that I want an appraisal on… I’m with GoDaddy but they told me that they DO NOT provide appraisals and I should go thru a third party. Ugh