Godaddy Hosting Blocking Googlebot

[Thanol]

I think it means "For what it's worth,"

[fairyjo]

Thanks Scott

Joanie

[FGTH]

Here's an inside scoop on GoDaddy's operations, performance and their strategy.
Company: GoDaddy.com
Annual Sales: $25 Million
Employees: 340
President: Bill Parsons
Marketing: Staphanie Heck
PR: Denise Seomin
Sister Company: Wild West Domains
Spin-off: Starfield Technologies

I'm from Scottsdale AZ, GoDaddy's headquarters, and have been a customer since they first opened shop.

Strategy:
"Walmartized business" - Maximize marketshare by underselling all competition and recouping profits through sheer volume and reduced operating costs. In other words, Godaddy offers the lowest fees for domain registration and transfers, but has the poorest customer support system.

Barriers:
Low margins. Competing companies that cannot sustain itself with equally low margins will eventually either be forced to reduce their margins or exit the business.

Growth:
Scale-out by creating new brands, such as creating sister companies that the same services.

So how does Godaddy.com continue operations when their margins are so low? They've reduced their call-center's capacity to support customers. Although this reduces short-term costs, the long-term effects are negative since the cost of retaining a customer is much lower than winning one back. In an attempt to minimize customer issues and turn-over, Godaddy has re-worked its website several times to improve user experience.

Major issue:
Extremely poor customer support and poor domain expiration policies.
Customers with expired domains are charged $80/domain to re-purchase them.

Case Study 1:
In a one month sampling of 100 telephone support calls, customers were placed on hold from 25 - 45+ minutes. 25% of customer calls were dropped out of queue.

Case Study 2:
Over the same period, 50 support emails were sent to Godaddy. The average response time was 1-2 hours. The average number of exchanged emails was 6 per issue with and without resolution. Emails were not read carefully by Godaddy customer support. The initial responses were from a list of canned answers that neither addressed nor solved the sample issues.

Overall:
Godaddy offers the lowest prices for domains.
Website user experience is below average with confusing and inconsistent layout and navigation.
Customer support is extremely poor.

[Emancipator]

GoDaddy stinks. I first had this conversation months ago on another forum I moderate on and totally agree with John.

Googlebot issues with godaddy is not new, and is just totally ridiculous.

[FGTH]

You can always overide global agent/IP blocking with http.conf or a local .htaccess

If you're using ensim, then you need to SSH to access the .htaccess file.
If you're using Sphera, you can modify http.conf to allow Google IPs/Agents or use the IP filter within the web manager.

[fishfreek]

Major issue:
Extremely poor customer support and poor domain expiration policies.
Customers with expired domains are charged $80/domain to re-purchase them.

Case Study 1:
In a one month sampling of 100 telephone support calls, customers were placed on hold from 25 - 45+ minutes. 25% of customer calls were dropped out of queue.

Case Study 2:
Over the same period, 50 support emails were sent to Godaddy. The average response time was 1-2 hours. The average number of exchanged emails was 6 per issue with and without resolution. Emails were not read carefully by Godaddy customer support. The initial responses were from a list of canned answers that neither addressed nor solved the sample issues.

Overall:
Godaddy offers the lowest prices for domains.
Website user experience is below average with confusing and inconsistent layout and navigation.
Customer support is extremely poor.

Wow. I love the blatent honest answers.

[Online Printer]

I agree with Brian, I never buy the cheapest. I found mid range priced registrars to give you the best bang for your buck. I like http://domainnamesystems.com/

[mattj407]

I have found a website selling $4.00 domain names... Is this possible???


http://www.myvaluehost.com/

:

[Emancipator]

what do you mean by "inside scoop". How do we know this is in fact an inside scoop. not trying to put you on the spot, I just dont accept things as the gospel without clear explanation

[spidersam]

I just signed up for a domain w/ GoDaddy, but have a sever w/ someone else. That wouldn't effect anything would it?

[FGTH]

Originally Posted by Emancipator

what do you mean by "inside scoop". How do we know this is in fact an inside scoop. not trying to put you on the spot, I just dont accept things as the gospel without clear explanation

Skepticism is a GREAT thing in business.

The reviews are based on results gotten through performance studies on GoDaddy's customer service quality.

Most people and businesses value feedback, especially negative reviews of businesses. Companies that are the subject of negative reviews can use this information to improve their internal processes, if its part of their strategy. Potential clients can (at their DISCRETION) use the information to help them decide.

Regarding GoDaddy's finances, this information is public record and can be verified through financial statements, such as income statements, balance sheets, and statement of cash flows. Most consulting firms gather and compile this information for sale, such as Cahners-Instat. In the best interest of consulting firms, their reports should be current and accurate.

Information pertaining to their operations can be verified by visiting their data centers and offices in Scottsdale, Arizona (or just call them and ask to speak to any of the people I listed).

This information can also be verified through paid information sources (e.g. Venture Capital firms have access to multiple subscription-based resources to monitor prospects, portfolios, and competitors).

The performance reports for customer support can easily be verified -- try calling the support number or emailing a question.

Anyone considering buying a product or service should be confident in their decision. How? Determine the selection criteria (cost, features, usability, serviceabilty, support, etc...), use applicable selection methods (score ranking), and verify the relevant information to build confidence in your decision.

It's all common sense.

I hope that helps!

[spidersam]

I hear that.

[adrian]

Godaddy for a while now has 100% blocked access to its site from many countries around the world that they consider are either terrorist states or have high credit card fraud. Although a stupid idea I suppose they do have the right to do this even though they actually block many clients who paid them to register domains etc and who now have no way to change settings or transfer the domains because they can not access the admin area!

However this scandal goes a stage further now. I just discovered that sites hosted by godaddy are also not visible to these countries either which is absolutely appalling. I can't see where they tell their clients this in the contract. We are also not talking just about countries such as Iraq or North Korea but european countries such as Romania which although does have a bad reputation at times, is a growing economy, a member of NATO and has US airforce bases.

godaddy's excuse about credit card fraud is clearly not an answer as to why sites hosted by them are blocked from these countries (I heard around 30 countries in total).

If you have a site hosted by godaddy and wish to know if it is visible in Romania please let me know the URL and I will check for you.

godaddy really sucks in my (humble) opinion.

[anthonycea]

Go daddy Domain names are good , Go daddy hosting Well I agree with John, Why not host with John? I would if he would return my Emails

[mazsola]

I don't believe registering with Godaddy would have an adverse effect. Hosting with them is another issue. I would hope Godaddy would be able to afford bandwidth for crawling. I think this is unethical.

[fsbotexas.us]

godaddy is a great place to buy domains, largely because the price, support, and site functionality are either unbeatable or very user friendly. I have something like 125 domains from them.

they screwed me once by renewing some domains w/o my permission due to their site automatically configuring the domains to do so at purchase, once my lawyers and I jumped their ****, they fixed that issue.

more to my point within this thread, why would anyone use them for hosting, there is no toll free support, and they are a big company servicing ( something like ) 10's of thousands of domains, maybe even 100K +.

IMHO, if you have - say more than 5 domains - get your own damn server, then you can provide hosting if you want, I don't for my own reasons, but you could also have 125 + redirect or gateway domains for a given project or business, and not have to pay a dime more than what you would be paying for the original 5 domains ( with less permissions of course ) on someone elses server.

only my 2 cents

[kitty]

I emailed Go daddy since I have 4 sites hosted by them, the original email is below this reply.

Thank you for writing.

This rumor is false and search engines will spider your site if you host with us. We look forward to hosting all your domains as you will see that your site will be crawled.

Please let us know if you should have any further questions, comments, or concerns.

Enjoy your day,

Kindest Regards,

Tyler Wirtjes
Office of the President
GODADDY.COM
480-505-8837 - Direct
480-505-8844 - Fax


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: we hear you will not let Google spider our sites
From: name remove to protect the inocent
Date: Sat, April 24, 2004 8:27 pm
To: president@godaddy.com


Rumor is that you will not let search engines spider your servers on the webmaster forums. We will not buy another site hosting program from you if this proves true..........

[adrian]

Hi,

You should ask godaddy why they block access to YOUR sites hosted with them from certain countries. Who are they to decide this? Worse than this is they they do not even have the decency to tell you. Seems that the US way of doing business these days is to give loads of hype about how well they treat their clients and then rip them off. Every company exists to make a profit of course but why all the fake hype. Just take a look at the ridiculous 'friendly' image they give to their president on the site. They try to make out they are client friendly but they are one of the most devious companies I have ever dealt with in this respect. I used to run a very successfull international company myself so I know the sort of PR tricks these people use and unfortunately in the US the average consumer falls for this kind of marketing.

[kitty]

I agree with you, GoDaddy Sucks in a lot of ways, I will never host another website with them....

So we also believe the lies that Google tells us, about many things, basic lies that they tell everyday...

Folks believe in Page Rank, it is a joke, but they still fall for it, even SEO experts follow it and try to figure it out..

The new name for Page Rank should be Larry Page Rank...I rank your pages high if they have links to Google Products in them.....

[PhilC]

Somehow I smell a conspiracy here to tarnish Go daddy's name and business .... then again, I've got a cold and can't be so sure ...