Guide
How to report a website to GoDaddy
By Josh Pigford, founder of Knockoff
Report a copycat website to GoDaddy only when GoDaddy registered the copycat's domain or hosts its files. Where you bought your own domain doesn't matter, so look up theirs first. If GoDaddy is the host, use the copyright track of its IP claims form. If it's only the registrar, copied photos go to the host instead.
- 1. Look up the copycat's registrar and host.
- 2. If neither is GoDaddy, report to the copycat's registrar and host.
- 3. If GoDaddy registered the domain, choose the report by what was copied.
- 4. If GoDaddy hosts the site, file a copyright claim on its IP form.
Look up the copycat's domain first
When your own domain lives at GoDaddy, it feels natural to call GoDaddy the day a copy turns up. One store owner did exactly that in 2023, after someone duplicated their whole Shopify store on another domain. The owner contacted GoDaddy, "with whom I purchased all my domains," got some advice on next steps, and paid for GoDaddy's domain broker service to try to buy the clone's domain back.
What worked was an email to the abuse address of the clone's own registrar, a different company, found in the domain's WHOIS record. The owner called it "ultimately the solution." That registrar wrote back: "We have suspended the domain name," and said the change "shall reflect in 4 to 6 hours."
Two lookups tell you which companies sit behind a copy:
- The registrar. ICANN's registration data lookup returns the registrar, the registration date and the nameservers for any domain. The registrar sold the copycat its domain name, and its record carries an abuse contact.
- The host. Check where the domain points. The host runs the servers the site lives on, and it's the company that can take copied photos down. GoDaddy itself points to acidtool.com for this step.
If neither answer is GoDaddy, GoDaddy has nothing to act on, and you can skip it. Email the abuse contact in the copycat's registrar record when the whole domain exists to pose as you, and send your copyright notice to the host. What to do when someone copies your website walks through both lookups in full, plus the evidence to save before you send anything.
Two results send you somewhere else. If the copy turns out to be a Shopify store, Shopify is the host, so report it on Shopify's own form. If Cloudflare sits in front of the site and hides the real host, start with Cloudflare's abuse report.
Your domain, yourbrand.example, has GoDaddy as its registrar and is held in your account. The copycat's domain, yourbrand-sale.example, sits at another registrar with its own abuse contact. Your report goes here, to that contact, and your copyright notice goes to the host.
When GoDaddy registered the copycat's domain
Now GoDaddy has a part to play. Its help page is blunt about content: "GoDaddy can only take action if the allegedly infringing content is hosted with us. If the content is hosted elsewhere, you'll need to contact that hosting provider directly." The registrar acts on the domain, not on your photos.
What did the copycat copy? A live site that asks for a login goes on GoDaddy's phishing form. A domain that is your brand name goes to a UDRP domain dispute. Your federally registered mark goes in a trademark claim on the IP form. Copied photos and product text go to the site's host, not GoDaddy.
- The phishing form wants a login area. GoDaddy defines phishing as "A site pretending to be another site with the intention of stealing login/personal identification information," and adds: "The website must be live and contain a login area." A copy that asks your customers to sign in fits. A checkout that only takes card details isn't a login area in GoDaddy's words, so reporting that one is a judgment call. On GoDaddy's phishing form, put your brand in the "Company or Brand Being Impersonated" box. Never call a plain copy phishing to get it looked at. That's a false statement on a report with your name on it.
- A UDRP dispute costs money and reaches only the domain. When the domain name itself is built on your brand, the route is ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy, which is separate from GoDaddy's copyright and trademark process. GoDaddy is bound by it as an ICANN-accredited registrar. At WIPO, a case over one to five domains with one panelist costs USD 1,500 before any lawyer's time, and normally finishes within 2 months of WIPO getting the complaint. It's slower than a report, and it's the right tool when the domain itself is doing the damage. The lookalike domain scanner shows which misspellings of your name are already registered.
- The trademark claim needs a federal registration and proof. GoDaddy's trademark track only takes a mark "registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office on the Principal Register," or with your own country's office for a foreign mark. State registrations and the Supplemental Register don't count. You also give the registration number, your dates of first use, and "sufficient evidence that the owner of the website that is claimed to be infringing is a GoDaddy customer." GoDaddy's policy lets it lock the domain or redirect its DNS while it looks into a claim, at its "sole discretion and without any legal obligation to do so." File it if you hold the registration, and don't plan around a lock. If you don't hold one, your photos still carry a claim of their own. Taking copies down without a trademark shows how.
- Photos and text go to the host. A copyright notice about your product photos or descriptions goes to whoever runs the server, from the lookup above.
These reports aren't a queue. A lookalike domain running your photos with a sign-in page gets a phishing report to GoDaddy and a copyright notice to the host on the same day. They're separate companies with separate inboxes, and nothing is gained by waiting on one before writing to the other.
When GoDaddy hosts the copycat's site
If the host lookup comes back GoDaddy, this is the one case where GoDaddy can take your copied photos down. Use the copyright track on GoDaddy's IP claims form, the one for work "being used without authorization on a GoDaddy-hosted website." GoDaddy prefers the form, but it also takes email to copyrightclaims@godaddy.com with "Copyright Claim" in the subject, and mail to Copyright Agent, GoDaddy, 100 S. Mill Ave, Tempe, AZ 85281 USA.
The claim itself is a standard DMCA notice: the copied pages, your original work, your signature, a good-faith statement, and a statement under penalty of perjury that it's accurate and you're authorized to act. The DMCA takedown notice generator writes all of it.
- The copycat reads your notice. GoDaddy forwards your notice to the site's owner. Send it from a business contact block: your company's name, a business email, a business phone and a business address.
- Nobody tells you the result. GoDaddy says "You will not receive updates regarding the evaluation or outcome of the complaint." Open the copied pages yourself every few days, and save a dated screenshot when they change.
- A counter-notice can bring it back. If the site owner files one, GoDaddy puts the material back in 10 to 14 business days, unless you tell GoDaddy first that you've filed a court action. GoDaddy publishes no takedown timeline.
- Repeat copycats can lose the account. GoDaddy's policy lets it close the accounts of repeat infringers. Keep each notice and each relist on file.
Working out the right place to report every copy is the job Knockoff does for Shopify brands. We search the open web every day for your product photos, confirm each copy against your own, and file the takedown with Shopify, the web host or the domain registrar as your authorized agent, under one letter you sign once.
Quick questions about GoDaddy reports
Can GoDaddy tell me who owns the copycat's domain? +
You can ask. GoDaddy takes requests for non-public registration data on its NPRD request form, sent to whoisrequests@godaddy.com with the exact domain name, and says it responds within 30 days. None of the reports on this page needs the owner's name, so keep it for when you're about to talk to a lawyer.
Can I complain to ICANN if GoDaddy does nothing? +
Only about DNS abuse, which ICANN's registrar rules since 5 April 2024 define as malware, botnets, phishing, pharming and spam that delivers them. Copied photos and trademark complaints aren't on that list, and ICANN doesn't regulate what a website says. For phishing, report it to the registrar first, give it a reasonable time, then file with ICANN Contractual Compliance.
