Why does WordPress say domain is already registered when GoDaddy says not?

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  menstonvillagewharfedale · Member · Aug 7, 2013 at 10:13 am

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  I have recently created the blog menstonvillagewharfedale.wordpress.com. I wanted to ‘buy’ the domain menstonvillagewharfedale.com for $18 (I’ve done it before on another blog of mine) but when I entered this into the procedure it said that this domain was not available. I tried many variations but every one came up that it was not available. However, when I entered the domain name into GoDaddy it said I could have it. What is going on? Advice please. I would prefer to do it through WordPress if possible.

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  raincoaster · Member · Aug 7, 2013 at 10:16 am

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  Perhaps GoDaddy purchased it and is squatting it?

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  menstonvillagewharfedale · Member · Aug 7, 2013 at 10:21 am

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  Does that mean GoDaddy continuously trawl newly created WordPress.com sites and ‘nick’ the non-Wordpress part of the domain names so that only they can sell it later?

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  raincoaster · Member · Aug 7, 2013 at 10:54 am

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  No, but some people have been known to do that for domain names that go dormant.

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  menstonvillagewharfedale · Member · Aug 7, 2013 at 11:13 am

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  Thanks for the reply. However, apart from the actual name I wanted I put it some variations, including some that were pretty stupid, but it still came back that they were already registered. That didn’t seem very likely so I wondered if there was something wrong at WordPress.

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  menstonvillagewharfedale · Member · Aug 7, 2013 at 11:26 am

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  PS. I thought I’d have another go. This time there was no problem – there must have been a glitch somewhere in the system. So now I have the domain without the wordpress. Thanks for the response – it led me to have another go and I learned something!