Marketplaces can help sellers keep their inventory fresh.
Yesterday, Jamie Zoch posted on twitter about how poor the accuracy of inventory at domain name marketplaces is:
The accuracy of inventory at domain name aftermarket platforms is absurdly inaccurate. Most would be better erasing databases and starting over with a process that is required to follow in order to be listed/verified.
— Jamie Zoch (@DotWeekly) October 21, 2020
I agree with Jamie that this is a big issue. It’s a bad feeling when you think you’ve bought a domain on a marketplace, only to find out that the person who listed it no longer owns it.
I’m guilty of being part of the problem. I don’t immediately remove my domains from all marketplaces when I sell them (although I do verify ownership before responding to a sales inquiry).
Marketplaces can help domain sellers keep their inventory accurate, thus keeping the marketplace accurate. Here are some ideas:
1. Use a verification system – AfternicDLS has a system that recognizes if a domain has been unlocked or is being transferred so that it can remove them from the distributed network. Could this be applied industry-wide? I know it isn’t easy with GDPR, but whatever they have seems to work for domains that are opted into Fast Transfer.
2. Integrate with registrars – The best way to confirm ownership in a world without full Whois is to integrate with registrars to confirm the domain is registered in the seller’s account. It would be helpful to have integrations that would automatically remove domains from marketplaces when ownership transfers or the registration lapses.
3. Make it easier to update inventory – Marketplaces should offer a downloadable spreadsheet that lists the domains in your marketplace account and their data — what’s in Whois, nameservers, registrar name, etc. This will help sellers identify anomalies to discover which domains they no longer own. Marketplaces also need to make it easy to delete these domains.
David says
Its pretty bad. I would estimate that on 70% of the names I buy I have to request an old listing be removed so I can add on Afternic.
Andrew Allemann says
That brings up another thing the marketplaces can do. If someone submits a domain that’s already on their marketplace, the name should be added to a review queue. The marketplace can determine if the domain is now owned by the new submitter and remove the old listing.
Spike says
That’s the problem. Afternic’s review queue is so large and with dwindling staff, they can’t turn them around fast enough. Weeks go by and emails are not getting replied to. I have to call and speak with someone to pull my emails out of the queue just to get them listed. And, anytime you make a change (e.g., pricing), it could be reviewed again. It’s a constant headache!
Joseph Peterson says
Most of the inaccuracies probably stem from the expiry process. Domains are listed, then expire, and are re-purchased by someone else. Almost by definition, someone who doesn’t care enough to renew the domain will have no interest or time to de-list it.
Inaccuracies due to an owner selling the domain would be a smaller percentage of the whole. But they might be more frequently encountered by buyers, since the domains that are allowed to expire are, on average, less desirable than those that are deliberately and successfully sold.
If all the major domain marketplaces were to integrate with all the major registrars, yes, that could solve the problem. But getting to that point would not be a smooth process, and it would annoy a lot of people. For example, what if I transfer my own domain between registrars? If the 2nd registrar is not integrated into the marketplace process, then what happens? The marketplace will detect that the domain has vanished from my account, but it won’t see that it has been added to my own account elsewhere. So will my domain be de-listed? That transitional stage – where 1 registrar is integrated but not another – is an inevitable step along the way to comprehensive integration between all registrars and all marketplaces. And it seems like a pain in the neck.
There are privacy concerns also, since the marketplaces would effectively know that 2 different registrar accounts are owned by the same person – even if that person might not wish to disclose that information. Given GDPR, there would be a lot of contracts to be re-written; and customers would need to opt in at all their registrars and marketplaces.
Also, this is an added development and manpower cost, which I doubt all these companies will want to incur.
It’s worth thinking about a solution here. But it needs to be very carefully planned.
Implementation would be difficult.
Charles says
I have a lot more tech skills than most.
I finally wrote an app to allow me to manage domains across the platforms, and it was not trivial.
Each platform should provide a SIMPLE way to upload a CSV/Text file with domain and pricing, as well as download the same thing.
Why can’t they make it SIMPLE to manage my list? Why do I have to implement a full API? Why do I have to scrape pages and synthesize an HTML submission form, and then have to figure out the update rate that keeps them from shutting down my script?
Nobody needs access to my registrar, i need SIMPLE access to their database for my records. And simple means anybody can do it.