

Calculating The 5,000 Most Frequently Used Domain Name Prefixes and Suffixes - matt1
http://www.leandomainsearch.com/top-domain-name-prefixes-and-suffixes

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matt1
Hey guys, about two weeks ago in a previous post about Lean Domain Search,
HackerNews user kanamekun asked "how did you pick the other keywords commonly
found in domain names?" [1]

I briefly explain there how I had done it in the past, which inspired me to
take a second look at the algorithm and see if there were ways I could improve
it. I wound up completely rewriting it to calculate the most popular domain
name prefixes and suffixes used in _all_ domain names. This article is about
that process and the results.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3789822>

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Sujan
Where did you get the zone file from? Link?

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matt1
You can apply through Verisign to obtain access:

[http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domai...](http://www.verisigninc.com/en_US/products-and-
services/domain-name-services/grow-your-domain-name-business/tld-zone-
access/index.xhtml?loc=en_US)

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joshu
Can you talk more about this? Process, pricing, et are all interesting to me.

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hncommenter13
+1. I'm actually curious about this as well, and I've read the VRSN doc. What
comes next after filling out the form? What kind of vetting, if any, did they
put you/your app through? Do you have to identify the app you plan to build in
advance and what if you don't know what it will be yet?

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zaidf
Your tool is very useful in finding domains but you're likely leaving a bunch
of money on the table by only monetizing via domain affiliates.

You should consider a premium subscription where members pay 5-10 bucks to see
even more domain options. Folks who buy lots of domains should have no problem
paying for the utility you provide.

I say this as someone who has found bunch of domains using your site but not
once used your affiliate link to buy because you don't have my preferred
domain registrar choice.

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e1ven
I really like LDS, it's a great way to examine names near what you're
thinking.

I'm very interested in a more premium service, however, where I can pay money
to have someone who's done this before find a name that's either free, or
available at a cheap price. I've tried things like PickyDomains, and some
others like it, but most of what I get is the same as if I just used tools
like LDS myself.

Any suggestions?

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matt1
Why don't you think you are qualified to choose a domain name from one of the
available ones you find on Lean Domain Search? Is there anything I can do to
make it easier?

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e1ven
It's very good at iterating on a name that I'm already thing about, but not
very good at going beyond what I've already considered.

Consider if I were writing a new Email package. I might tell your tool "Mail"
or "Message"

As great as LDS is, it's going to give me "GetMessage.com" or "HiveMail.com"
not anything like Pegasus Mail, Cyrus, or Hermes.

Those are much more creative names!

These are all stories about mail delivery, to an extent, but any computerized
system is going to have a hard time with it.

The best that I suspect could easily do would by synonyms - If I give it Dark,
it could suggest Black and Dusk, and give me names using those..

But I'd love to see something with a less direct connection.

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matt1
Hey, thanks for your thoughts.

So you know, LDS does list synonyms on the right side of the search results
page, which should help to some extent. Searching for "mail" wouldn't turn up
Pegasus Mail, though I could add "pegasus+" to the search results and it
would. There's a balance fine line between including a variety of results and
including poor results and I need to be careful not to cross it. Any
recommendations?

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e1ven
Sorry, I think I was being obtuse.

I don't think the problem is that you don't have enough generic words to add
to either side. I think the problem is that all your doing is adding words to
either side ;)

I like your site. It's really useful to get the low-hanging-fruit.

But for instance, Cyrus is a awesome name for a Mail program, because Cyrus
the great is credited with the creation of the first postal service.

That doesn't mean that CyrusCoupons is a good name ;)

Many names are good because of the metaphors they invoke, or because of the
story associated with that character, place or object.

"Teapot 3d" would be a great name, because it's a Teapot is a traditional
object to render. Lena is a great name for image manipulation, because of..
<http://www.ecogito.net/articles/lena.html>

Again, I think your site is great for what it is, but a lot of my favorite
names.. Really great names.. come from much more oblique or abstract
approaches, for that particular problem. These don't generalize well, by their
very nature.

Does that make sense?

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matt1
Makes a lot of sense.

There's a lot of smart folks on here... can anyone think of a way to
algorithmically come up with domains like Colin is describing?

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lpolovets
Do you have info on related sites (e.g. site X and Y are direct competitors?)
If you do, you can use that for word clustering and find classes of related
words. For example, if you have a set of 250 email providers, you might see
"mail" and "email" a lot more than for domains in other categories, but you
might also see something more subtle, like "postman" or "contact" or etc.
Probably not as subtle (and cool) as Cyrus, but at least heading in the right
direction.

Another idea: get a dump of Wikipedia and do a TF-IDF analysis on all of the
words. When someone types "mail", you look at wikipedia.org/Mail and look for
the most unique words. As it happens, the Mail article does mention Cyrus the
Great, so as long as Cyrus is a pretty rare word in the corpus, it might be a
suggestion you can make.

That said, there is such a thing as too clever. If I typed in "mail" as a
domain search query you told me to create the website "CyrusMail", I would
wonder what the heck that was all about because I don't happen to know the
relationship between mail and Cyrus the Great.

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drcube
>"The only results I omitted were single letter prefixes and suffixes because
they’re not something you would generally add to generate quality domain
names."

Adding "i" to any word seems to be all the rage these days. And "e" would be
another popular single letter prefix, I think. I can't think of any single
letter suffixes though, except maybe "y".

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joncalhoun
I'm really curious if any common prefix + suffix domains are available.
cancercollege.com? yes please.

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matt1
That's why I made the list clickable so you can quickly check to see what
combinations are available.

