[bmelton]

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.

https://domaininvesting.com/godaddy-still-not-frontrunning-d...

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.

[omega3]

> 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.

[bmelton]

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

[blep_]

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.

(I do not actually believe this.)

[JPHPJ]

This.

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.