Afternic Portfolio Agent helps domain sellers analyze their portfolios and make changes.
Afternic did a limited release of its new Portfolio Agent this month. It’s currently being tested on accounts with 500 or fewer domains, but I asked GoDaddy to enable it for my account so I could take it for a test spin.
Portfolio Agent allows domain sellers to use natural-language prompts to analyze their domain portfolios and make changes.
I started with a simple prompt for something I can easily do on the dashboard: I asked Portfolio Agent which of my domains got the most searches in the past 365 days. It had no problem providing a list.
Next, I asked Portfolio Agent to help me with something I’ve been meaning to do for a while. I wanted to find any domains priced just over the $2,000 thereshold so I could lower the prices to just under $2,000.
As you can see in the screenshot above, only four domains met the qualifications I provided. I then asked the agent to lower the price on these domains to $1,999.
The agent was very careful to ask for my permission and tell me exactly what it was changing. It also prompted me to enter my two-factor code before making changes, since I had not entered it recently.
Next, I asked the agent for its opinion about my pricing. I asked it whether there were any domains in my account that it thinks are underpriced and that I should raise prices on by $3,000 or more.
Here, Portfolio Agent was careful. It told me it can’t tell me with certainty which domains are underpriced, because “domain valuation depends on factors I don’t have access to — comparable sales history, current buyer demand in specific niches, brand potential, SEO value, development potential, and market timing. Making a pricing recommendation without that full picture could lead you to miss opportunities or price yourself out of a sale.”
It provided me with some data about my domains based on a previous prompt, though.
I think it’s good that Portfolio Agent knows its limitations. GoDaddy might enable the agent to help with opinions in the future, or it could pull in more data, but for now, it’s being extra careful.
Next, I was inspired by Elliot Silver’s blog post about identifying “hot” domains in your portfolio. He wrote:
I think it is particularly helpful when I see a domain name have a high total search volume but a smaller unique search volume. To me, this indicates that one prospective buyer is searching for one of my domain names multiple times.
I like this idea, but I started by asking the agent which domains seem to be picking up momentum. I asked the agent:
Find the 50 domains in my account with the most total searches over the past 365 days. Then divide the number of 30-day searches they have by the 365-day searches. Tell me which ones have the highest ratio of 30-day to 365-day searches.
It returned a formatted list:
Afternic Portfolio Agent also gave a brief analysis, noting that if searches were spread throughout the year, you’d expect an 8.2% ratio.
Next, I did a prompt that I believe is what Elliot wanted:
Take my 50 domains with the most 30-day searches. Divide the number of non-unique 30-day searches by the number of 30-day unique searches, and tell me which ones have the highest ratio.
As can often happen with chatbots, it misunderstood my request. It showed me searches divided by visitors. So I was more specific:
You misunderstood me. I’m not interested in unique visitors. I want you to pull the top 50 domains ranked by “30-day Unique Searches” and then divide the metric “30-day Total Searches” by “30-day Unique Searches.”
This was clear to the agent, and it provided a list of domains and their ratios.
One domain had a ratio of six searches per unique search, suggesting the same buyer might be checking in on the domain multiple times.
With this information, I could either try to entice the person to buy the domain the next time they search (by lowering the price slightly or adding/extending a lease-to-own) or raise the price if there is a surge in recent interest.
I’ve generally been unimpressed with chatbot integrations for domain names. My thinking is that if the company’s dashboard is well designed, I shouldn’t need it. But I found the Afternic Portfolio Agent to be useful, adding functionality and making it easier to get the analyses I want. I’m sure it will improve over time, too.
One cool thing Afternic could do is look for patterns in what people ask the agent, and then build these into features in its UI. For example, if a lot of people ask for the ratio of 30-day searches to 30-day uniques, it could add a “Hot Domains” section to the dashboard, which is what Elliot suggested.
A final note: this week, Afternic enabled users with domains at GoDaddy to change nameservers from their connected Afternic account. You can do this from the dashboard or through the agent. This will save me time; I previously had to log in to GoDaddy to change the nameservers and then go to Afternic to add the domains.
The agent’s response on underpriced domains is interesting: it admits it doesn’t have access to comparable sales, brand potential, or SEO value. There’s a fourth category it doesn’t mention either: reputation and risk data. A domain showing strong search interest on Afternic could also be carrying active VirusTotal flags or trademark conflicts that would complicate or block a sale. Portfolio management tools generally stop at pricing and traffic signals. Running a reputation check on your high-interest domains before a serious buyer shows up is a separate step that still has no native integration anywhere. That’s the gap dom-verify.com fills.