This absolutely happens. Only with GoDaddy? Not sure.
I have searched for some obscure domains in unpopular niches (imagine <extremely obscure keyword><extremely rare/popular suffix>.com> to find them registered mysteriously 24 hours later to someone on.. you guessed it.. Go daddy. This has happened enough times to me that I now only search for domains after I login into the control panel at the domain provider I use.
Many domain/whois tools do the same things.
My semi-educated guess is all searches are queued, sorted by popular keywords, and most likely hand picked off by an official employee, or someone who may have access to the data.
OTOH, I'm surprised no one has done a honeypot experiment to catch this type of behaviour in the act.
I have searched for some obscure domains in unpopular niches (imagine <extremely obscure keyword><extremely rare/popular suffix>.com> to find them registered mysteriously 24 hours later to someone on.. you guessed it.. Go daddy. This has happened enough times to me that I now only search for domains after I login into the control panel at the domain provider I use.
Many domain/whois tools do the same things.
My semi-educated guess is all searches are queued, sorted by popular keywords, and most likely hand picked off by an official employee, or someone who may have access to the data.
OTOH, I'm surprised no one has done a honeypot experiment to catch this type of behaviour in the act.