Godaddy is a crappy company for many reasons, but this seems like something that's trivially testable. If they were really front running domains, anyone could spend an hour typing domains in and see a bunch of them mysteriously registered by godaddy the next day. Has nobody done that? Why can't I find any blogs where this was attempted?
This happens a lot. Godaddy comes up in the news, someone accuses them of front-running, someone else investigates the accusation and finds that the allegation in question was definitely not the result of front-running.
I have no information on whether they are or aren't front-running, but every time I've seen a specific allegation, it's been disproven. That doesn't make it factual either way, but I like Godaddy for enough other reasons to not use them, so I don't particularly care if they are or aren't, but I've yet to see a specific allegation be found credible.
> I am able to see that the registrant is based in New York. GoDaddy is based in Arizona. (...) From what I can see, it does not look like the domain name is listed for sale via GoDaddy or its network.
Doesn't sound like much of an investigation. It has happened to so many people (including myself) that either they do it themselves, allow third party access to domain search or their employees are able to do it.
If you can disprove the allegation in a single step, not much of an investigation is needed.
But like I said, these allegations crop up all the time, and investigations are done all the time, and every single time I have seen them, they have been quickly disproven. I am not an oracle, so it's possible that I've missed the cache of definite proof that exists, but I have seen lots and lots of debunking of the notion.
To your point though, there are numerous ways that could make someone feel like they were front-run, whether or not they had been.
* Before the ubiquity of SSL, I think it was common for people to buy search traffic from ISPs. If there were domain-squatters paying for this data, it would be trivial for them to buy anonymous traffic data, filter by "godaddy.com?domain=" and collate the reports. If they also cross-referenced the ${domain} part of that query with the number of people who attempted to go to ${domain}, it would be a good signal that owning ${domain} could be profitable
* Obviousness. It's not always, but often enough that when I see these allegations arise, they're related to The New Thing. e.g., 3 years ago, a lot of people felt like they were front-run for domains they were considering that started with "nft," or "crypto." Now, I'd wager that a lot of people feeling like they were front-run were considering domain names with "ai" in them.
* Selling search volume. I have no idea if Godaddy is or isn't doing this, but it's definitely a possibility. If they are, it isn't front-running, but the effect is just as nefarious IMO. I believe they've said that they don't, but that's from a vague memory and I have no idea if they can or should be considered credible
Conspiracy theory: their front-running bot also scrapes news sites and automatically stops for a few days if it sees a major story about them, specifically to produce this effect.
Its because it used to happen and people are convinced it is still happening usually due to the aftermarkets. Its just not economically feasible anymore.
It is trivially testable. I've tested it myself a few times, against a few different companies, just for fun. I've never seen it happen.
If you imagine ordering all the domains in order of desirability, where the most desirable are long gone, and nobody wants "nsejrx8oesrjasrjb.com" (and even if they want an obfuscated domain, they don't want that obfuscated domain), there is a middle ground where it's not worth pre-registering but if you see an indication of interest it may push you over, especially if you have a cheap back door for registration as registrars do. In that case, the only ones sensible to front-run are the ones in that middle ground. It is possible that I never chose a domain that triggered such an algorithm. That said, as I was aware of this possibility at the time, I did deliberately try to come up with a combination of tasty & tempting words in a new format that looked like maybe someone would really want it, and I never could get the hypothetical algorithms to bite.
Take a crack at it if you're interested; it really isn't that hard or a big investment in time.
They must have some algo that rates domain quality. It happened to me recently, so it's not bullshit. They do front running, but they have some sofisticated scheme behind it.