Godaddy valuations (1 Viewing)

I've made a habit of tracking published domain valuations for my domains, from Godaddy and a handful of others. So when I buy a domain, or when I get an inquiry on a domain, I check them, and keep a record attached to that inquiry. This allows me to see how these valuations change over time. For a long time, I've not seen any significant changes in valuations, but there are significant differences in valuations between services. Some do a piss poor job of valuing .ca, some completely miss out on non-english words (which kills french word valuations), etc, etc. Of course these valuations are only one opinion, automated based on some formula and various indicators, so I take them with a huge grain of salt.

Occasionally, they can be helpful to educate domain buyers as to the value. In any case, I figure its data, so usefulness aside, I am going to continue to record it.

However, lately I've noticed that GoDaddy valuations for some .CA domains have jumped significantly. One I just checked now jumped by a factor of 2.35 just in the past month. I also noticed that the valuation also doubled at another place as well - one that traditionally has really lowballed .CA valuations. It's still very low, but it did double suddenly, which is at least encouraging.

I wonder if Godaddy is recognizing that their low valuations are hurting sales activities in the .ca space? Maybe they've realized they're not going to get sellers to sell cheaper, so now they're trying to work the other end and trying to convince buyers that the domain is more valuable, thus bringing buyer and seller expectations more closely in line, and thus more likely to result in a sale.

Anyone else notice this trend on their domains?

As long as they value red.ca in the 10k usd range they are still full of it.

I look at that domain as a marker, it meets every single criteria as a top notch .ca domain and they still only value it near 10k.

dn.ca is at 11k which makes godaddy domain appraisals about as useless as it gets.

I generally prefer Graen.com Valuations:

Here is Red.ca
https://graen.com/free_domain_valuation_red.ca

LCM said:

I generally prefer Graen.com Valuations:

Here is Red.ca
https://graen.com/free_domain_valuation_red.ca

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Definitely more in line to where it should be.

Well I agree, by far Godaddy's worst valuations are for the best domains. .CA domains I've bought or sold in the 6-figure range are valued $5K - $15K, lol.

The point of the post is that I'm noticing that their valuations are going up, in some cases, significantly, and that's clearly better. I'm just checking some others and an LLL increased 3.7x, another only by 1.5x, others not much at all. They've clearly changed their formula, added some new data sources, or something. I've never noticed any significant changes in their valuations this quickly or this wide-spread before.

I own a lot of domains, so for many of them, the valuations may become more realistic, and if so, then maybe we can begin to use those valuations to help educate our buyers. For domains that are clearly undervalued, that's fine, its never going to convince me to sell at that price, I'm waiting for the one or two buyers that may ever come along that will understand that value.

And yes, I also track Graen valuations, which are more in line with my actual historical sales, but still quite undervalued at the top top end.

I also check Saw.com, DomainIndex, Estibot and PC.domains. Anyone have any others to suggest that might be worth tracking?

LCM said:

I generally prefer Graen.com Valuations:

Here is Red.ca
https://graen.com/free_domain_valuation_red.ca

Click to expand...

Never heard of this one, thank you for the link.

Agree - never heard of Graen and it seems decent for an automated tool

Graen is the best one that gives realistic appraisal.
There's also:
Saw.com
Nameworth.com

GoDaddy updated their valuation algorithm recently. It doesn't give an appraisal for premium domains. You get

Estimated Value: more than $25,000 (USD).​

silentg said:

GoDaddy updated their valuation algorithm recently.

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Did they state that anywhere?

lotsofcoffee said:

Did they state that anywhere?

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No, I only know because of my routine of logging the values at each new inquiry. And I dismissed it the first few times I noticed until now when I realized it is much more widespread.

I saw it get posted to Twitter. https://twitter.com/search?q=godaddy appraisal&src=typed_query&f=top

rlm said:

Well I agree, by far Godaddy's worst valuations are for the best domains. .CA domains I've bought or sold in the 6-figure range are valued $5K - $15K, lol.

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I agree.

rlm said:

And yes, I also track Graen valuations, which are more in line with my actual historical sales, but still quite undervalued at the top top end.

I also check Saw.com, DomainIndex, Estibot and PC.domains. Anyone have any others to suggest that might be worth tracking?

Click to expand...

I only use Graen.com and Saw.com. Others don't come anywhere close to my own valuations/expectation.

lotsofcoffee said:

Did they state that anywhere?

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On Namepros - it was down for a week or so and came back online on April 12 with new and higher values across the board.

Yeah, GoDaddy did some routine work on updating the appraisal algorithm. There are one or two more small changes to come, too.

jamesiles said:

Yeah, GoDaddy did some routine work on updating the appraisal algorithm. There are one or two more small changes to come, too.

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They have some tweaking to do, I literally paid twice their appraised value for dn.ca a long time ago. So how can it appraise for 11k when it actually sold for way more?

The whole .ca appraisals need some work

PS. I paid twice the appraised value for red.ca over a decade ago and that sale is on the books.

LCM said:

I generally prefer Graen.com Valuations:

Here is Red.ca
https://graen.com/free_domain_valuation_red.ca

Click to expand...

It seems to be more accurate than GD in my opinion but I did appraise a couple of my 2L .ca’s. I’ll take this appraisal any day. lol

I wrote about the GoDaddy (and other) appraisal systems before:

NFTs.com domain name “appraisals” vs. actual transaction price

They're pretty useless --- for entertainment/SEO/lead generation value only!

As for graen.com, I'm not impressed.....

HB.com: https://graen.com/free_domain_valuation_hb.com

Long Term Price Suggestion $640,909
Short Term Price Suggestion $183,117

School.com: https://graen.com/free_domain_valuation_school.com

Long Term Price Suggestion $343,253
Short Term Price Suggestion $98,072

Leap.com: https://graen.com/free_domain_valuation_leap.com

Long Term Price Suggestion $372,092
Short Term Price Suggestion $106,312

Those are all unrealistically low.

I have also noticed that on my premium .com domains they are priced low. Many of my .CA domains were priced higher.

It will always be difficult for automated valuations because we're all waiting for the one-and-probably-only buyer willing to pay our top end price. And it is those best domains in each portfolio that we are going to be the stingiest negotiating with. So the higher the prices go, the fewer the options, the fewer the buyers, the market is no longer liquid and ultimately a deal hinges not on value but on other factors such as, how desperate is the seller or how well funded is the buyer or what are the current market conditions? The same name could sell at vastly different prices in the hands of different sellers.

Domain valuations are certainly of more value and of more accuracy at the lower to middle ends of domains, simply because there are likely to be exponentially more potential buyers, and exponentially more potential options, leading to more data points to work on.

So my advice is, valuations certainly have much less meaning at the top end, and much more meaning at the low end. Use or don't use them accordingly.

I know from my perspective, any time Godaddy's valuations go up significantly, then it only helps plant that seed in the brain of a buyer that maybe the domain is worth it and that my price isn't as crazy as they want to believe. I would love to see GoDaddy valuation prices get to the point where I could reliably say, yep, I'll sell at that price.

Interesting thread here:


@Bob Hawkes notes that the Godaddy values have changed significantly.

Paul Nicks from Godaddy states: "The values aren't meant to be static. No algorithm change was made, but we did add a lot more data to improve the recency"