Two Ways to Find Domains Quickly
May 8th, 2008 (2:00pm) Mike Gunderloy 9 Comments
Some of us have a real addiction to buying domain names. I own about 30 myself, and I have friends with many more. If you’re in that boat, it’s worth knowing about a couple of tools that help you find open domain names quickly.
Instant Domain Search bills itself as “domain name availability, as fast as you can type”. As you type a prospective name, it shows you whether the .com, .net, and .org are open. If they are, you can jump straight to GoDaddy, 1&1, Yahoo, Register.com, or Network Solutions to register them.
Domize takes the same general idea and adds a few twists. It keeps track of potential domains along the way (so if you type “MyDomain”, it looks for “MyDomai”, “MyDoma”, and so on), and can show you thumbnails of any name that’s already taken. They do all their direct registrations via GoDaddy, though obviously you can use the registrar of your choice with a tad less convenience.
9 Comments Post your own comment
Einer says: May 8th, 2008 2:52pm
you should really try http://www.ajaxwhois.com why is it better? it’s doing same thing as those above but it’s also checking foreign TLD’s. very handy.
Mike Gunderloy says: May 8th, 2008 3:35pm
Thanks Einer - that’s a good find. A bit slower to load for me than the other two, but I like their inclusion of “domain hacks” - ie, search for “pleonasm” and it also checks domains like “pleona.sm” - very Web 2.0 ;)
Douglas Holt says: May 8th, 2008 4:21pm
I highly recommend BustAName.com
I have found more usefule domain names with this ajaxy service than any other ajax domain name search engine. Searches can also be saved and retrieved which is great.
David Norton says: May 9th, 2008 4:27am
I agree with Douglas about BustAName.com. It lets you type individual words (and group them) and it will combine them to determine which domains are available. (Disclaimer: I went to college with BustAName’s creator)
Richard says: May 9th, 2008 9:43am
My Domain Lookup for Firefox tool might be of interest, too.
Vaibhav says: May 10th, 2008 3:05am
I went looking at bustaname.com, and entered “watch” as a word. Every time I add that as a word, it doesn’t work (as in the page refreshes).
Charles Knight says: May 10th, 2008 1:33pm
Mike,
Excellent topic. May I republish it for AltSearchEngines.com with attribution?
Thanks,
Charles Knight, ed
Judi Sohn says: May 10th, 2008 4:37pm
Thanks for asking, Charles. You may excerpt the post with attribution. Please do not repost in its entirety. Thanks.
Leonid Mamchenkov says: May 11th, 2008 11:50pm
I am a frequent user of http://www.nameboy.com .