Whether you’re an experienced domain name investor or a first-time buyer, GoDaddy Auctions is the premier expired domain name auction platform, providing access to thousands of desirable domains every day.
We’re diving into the expiry landscape with Bartosz Mozyrko, GoDaddy Auctions' visionary product manager. With a rich background that includes a pivotal role at Uniregistry, Bart brings a wealth of experience and insight to his current position, driving forward some exciting initiatives.
In this interview, Bart shares his journey from Uniregistry to GoDaddy, detailing how his experiences have shaped his approach to improving the GoDaddy Auctions platform. We discuss leveraging technology and his data-driven approach to bring more innovation to Auctions, as well as some of the challenges that have faced the team, along with what’s in store for 2025.
Q&A with Bartosz Mozyrko
Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
Can you share a little about your background and how you came to work for GoDaddy?
Sure! Before joining GoDaddy, I worked as a product manager at Uniregistry, where I collaborated closely with the domain registrar and had the chance to support the Uni Marketplace and Uni App teams during some major product launches.
At the time, the company was very investor-focused, which gave me valuable insight into the world of domain aftermarket. It was an incredible learning experience, and I had the opportunity to connect with some real industry legends like Frank Schilling, Jeffrey Gabriel or John Berryhill. Their mentorship helped me get up to speed fast. In fact, I even sold my first domain for a high four-figures there which sparked a deeper passion for the industry.
When GoDaddy acquired Uni, I was tasked with leading a team to overhaul the domain transfer experience by integrating UX patterns from Uni. The project was a success, which led to a follow-up initiative to revamp the DCC Portfolio Manager. We expanded the core domain management experience with investor-focused features, including advanced bulk capabilities, filters, data insights, portfolio organization tools, and seamless "List For Sale" integration.
Since 2023, I’ve taken ownership of the Auctions experience.
What learnings have you brought from Uniregistry to guide GoDaddy Auctions?
I had the privilege of learning from fascinating customer stories and developing a deep, data-driven approach to how domain investors at all levels buy and sell domain names. These learnings gave me a good understanding of different investment strategies, which factors drive sales, and which signals indicate a domain is worth holding onto.
A big takeaway was the importance of truly understanding investor pain points, especially when it comes to time constraints and the need for efficiency. Time is money, right? It became clear that investors value control and productivity, always seeking ways to make faster decisions and manage their portfolios with less effort.
Now, at GoDaddy, I get to level up these explorations and make a bigger impact as a product guy.
How does GoDaddy Auctions foster innovation within its team? Are there any recent experimental features or projects that you can share with us?
What I really appreciate about the team here is how collaborative we are. Engineers are encouraged to join customer and partner calls to capture real-world insights, and we hold internal retrospectives to improve continuously.
There’s always strong cross-team collaboration, with people participating in visionary workshops led by our talented UX Designers or diving into hackathons. The best ideas from these sessions turn into A/B experiments, and if they succeed, they become core components of the customer experience.
This year, GoDaddy Auctions has really ramped up our experimentation efforts to ensure that the changes we make to the expiry platform deliver meaningful value.
Every month, we run at least two active tests to improve the investor experience, with a peak of seven experiments running simultaneously. The goal is straightforward: make it easier for domain buyers to discover and acquire the right domains. We're leveraging machine learning and personalization, particularly in areas like domain search, filters, and listing descriptions.
And we're just getting started with ramping up our GenAI initiatives to connect buyers with the right inventory and simplify the domain acquisition process. The best is yet to come.
Let’s talk about Auction Integrity. It has been a big focus for GoDaddy Auctions in 2024. Why has it been a focus, and what initiatives are underway to support auction integrity?
A group of bad actors specializing in shill bidding was causing frustration among serious domain buyers. And I get it — you're investing time to find the perfect domain, putting in mental energy to participate in an auction, only to be outbid by someone who’s never actually going to pay for the name. It’s a total waste of time.
The flagship project this year was implementing an ID Verification requirement for new GoDaddy Auction members—a measure that can also be applied to existing members whenever there’s doubt about their genuine intent as buyers.
Mihai, an engineer on the Auctions team, and I covered the key details of these recent changes in-depth in a blog post, which is a great resource for anyone looking to learn more.
What’s planned for the future to continue to support auction integrity?
I’m particularly excited about our progress with the new RISK engine integration. This initiative expands our ability to monitor users joining the expiry platform by incorporating signals from across the entire GoDaddy ecosystem rather than limiting our focus to activity specific to GoDaddy Auctions.
Even better, we’re using machine learning to identify and score potential fraudsters, restricting their actions before they can disrupt the platform.
That said, as with any substantial new capability, there’s a learning curve. So if you encounter issues—like restricted access to certain features or bidding—it’s because we’re still iterating on these rules to ensure they’re effective. Thank you everyone for your patience as we fine-tune the new framework!
What are the best tools that domain investors should be leveraging to find domain names at GoDaddy Auctions?
One feature I’m particularly fond of is Saved Searches. We’re in the process of giving this feature a much-needed revamp. You’ll begin to see this at GoDaddy Auctions soon, but here’s a preview.
Saved Search lets users apply advanced filters like inventory type, keywords, and more and save their searches for quick access later. You can also export the results to a CSV file for further refinement and receive an email notification when matching domains are found.
While it’s already powerful, there’s room to grow. For instance, we’re exploring adding new filters like including GoValue, along with others that will help investors find top-tier names without need to pay for external tools. Many great expiry domains fly under the radar, so we want to make it easy for the customers to notice them.
At GoDaddy Auctions, the scale of our platform requires that each new feature is capable of handling high demand. This means we can’t always rush the rollout. We’re focused on delivering the most impactful capabilities first, ensuring we move forward with the purpose of getting it right.
What sets GoDaddy Auctions apart from other auction platforms for domain name buyers?
Supply. Our inventory continues to grow rapidly, fueled by new partner integrations that are adding even more domains to the expiry stream. We're expanding it to better meet the needs of diverse investment strategies.
This year, we brought on additional international partners and built a strong pipeline of future integrations, with several already in progress. Our Partnerships and Business Development teams are driving these wonderful opportunities. Notably, recently, we’ve diversified our domain inventory mix by incorporating a wider array of high-traffic names.
At the same time, we’re working closely with internal platform teams to bring hundreds of new TLDs into Auctions directly from the GoDaddy registrar. Given the massive scale of domains on our platform, improving domain discovery is critical to help our customers find the right domains at the right time. Expiry auctions are tied to external expiration cycles, so if we’re not effective at merchandising those names, they’ll drop.
We see many domains go through the GoDaddy Auctions lifecycle, fail to sell, and then end up selling for a premium on drop-catching services.
What are you excited for Auctions in 2025, can you share anything that we might see next year from GoDaddy Auctions?
The most exciting developments are centered around domain discovery and personalization. You’ll likely see them rolled out gradually as A/B experiments first. We’re also planning to pick up work on the Expiry API migration from outdated SOAP standard to modern REST, guided by the feedback of our programmatic buyers. One key project on the roadmap is focused on bringing the power of APIs to a no-code, user-friendly interface. While it's still in the exploratory phase, so no promises just yet.
We’ll continue to push forward with fraud prevention and automation, though these efforts will primarily be behind the scenes, aimed at reducing manual work and improving detection accuracy—so they may not be as visible to customers. Pricing experimentation will be a key focus as well. Our goal is to ensure that we price the inventory in a way that helps investors find the right domains and incentivizes competitive bidding.
As we move forward, we’ll keep pushing the envelope with better tools, smarter insights, and a more personalized experience, making it easier for investors to find and win the right domains at GoDaddy Auctions!
Thank you, Bart, for sharing your insights into your experience at GoDaddy and GoDaddy Auctions. We’re excited to see the future of Auctions under your team!
To keep up to date with the latest news from GoDaddy Auctions, follow @GoDaddyAuctions on X. We always welcome feedback for GoDaddy Auctions. To get in touch with us with your feedback, please email domaincommunity@godaddy.com.
