Why are there so many entries showing available - then taken?

There have been a lot of entries that say available and when you check entries later they say “taken”, but when you check the WHOIS, they haven’t been available for years. What is the issue with this lately??

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I agree. Just had Janice check 17 domains in the same contest. All of my entries other than dot.coms (ie: .de,.au etc) were showing as “report domain registration” She advised me to check them on goDaddy because this happens alot.

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Go Daddy has a history of registered names that have been checked on their site. Here’s a link: https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/2er8c4/domain_name_registered_on_godaddy_after_i_looked/

I typed in ‘godaddy registered the name i checked’ at Google and it came back with 800,000 links.

So, don’t use GoDaddy.

InterNIC is the only site I know that doesn’t register names which have been checked on their site https://www.internic.net/whois.html There could be others.

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I know a lot of the alternate domain endings doesn’t work correctly, but I am seeing more and more .com’s doing this as well. Example on June 3, 2017 I entered ForesightFunds.com and it entered as available (when I look now it is taken and the WHOIS says it has been registered since April 2014).

Same with IntegraSign.com – I entered on May 18, 2017 (the WHOIS shows registered since May 2008).

Others have been doing this more lately, even with the .com…something is amiss with the “checker”…

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Well, I guess I’m not the only one, who has this problem.I thought it was just me.

Wow i thought as much…i fell victim of this last week …about 3 great names …all registered few days after i check them on godaddy… Thank you so much for the hint @Arnet

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Thanks @Arnet, but when you enter your name, the domain checker used by SH is godaddy. Also if you check all names on your “MY Entries” tab, Godaddy is used. I’ve had too many entries that were snatched up a day after I entered them or right after the 30 day mark, but when I check whois, they have all been registered anonymously. So I’ve never had any recourse. They best is when they are totally made up words, always leaves me smh.

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[quote=“LisaMac, post:7, topic:2128”]
Thanks @Arnet, but when you enter your name, the domain checker used by SH is GoDaddy.[/quote]
Ahhh, so that explains it - Unfortunately, I’ve been a victim of this too. :disappointed:

We have noticed this as well, and our engineering team is working on an upgrade to our domain checker. Thank you.

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Well thanks @Arnet and y’all for the GD observations; this could explain a lot.

I have searched for availability on tens of thousands of domains on GoDaddy over the past several years
and yes after several days or weeks some are registered but there are also hundreds and thousands of others
that have not been registered.

Sorry, but this idea that GoDaddy registers domains based on search/inquiries is a conspiracy theory that has no basis in fact.

NamePros has over one million members. Do not underestimate the hundreds of thousands of people who are searching
for domain names around the world. It’s only natural that some of the names we look up will get registered by other people
over time, even the next day.

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