

Lean Domain Search now includes premium domain names in every search - matt1
http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/24-lean-domain-search-partners-with-sedo-to-help-you-find-the-perfect-domain-name

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matt1
Hey guys,

Back in January I launched Lean Domain Search, a domain name generator, on
HackerNews [1]. I've been hard at work on it (I actually left my day job in
September) and have spent the last few weeks on this latest change.

In the past when you performed a search the site only shows you available
domain name results. With this change, it now checks Sedo's database and
returns relevant premium domain names from their portfolio as well. I've tried
to not make the results too intrusive so that they don't get in the way if all
you're looking for are available domain names.

Would love to get your feedback -- thanks!

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470977>

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ryandvm
Am I the only one that is way too paranoid to use a service like this? I
already assume that half of the DNS registrars are underhandedly registering
good domain names that go through their lookup services.

~~~
matt1
Hey Ryan,

I understand your concern because unfortunately some registrars have done this
in the past. I can tell you that I've never shared what you're searching for
with anyone else; no one benefits from your searches other than you.

For what it's worth, in the 10+ months of Lean Domain Search's existence there
hasn't been one allegation of impropriety -- and it should stay that way as
long as I'm doing my job of keeping your searches private.

~~~
michaelt

      I can tell you that I've never shared what you're 
      searching for with anyone else; no one benefits from your 
      searches other than you.
    

That's reassuring! I suppose if you're suggesting dozens of domains to people,
registering them speculatively would be difficult as there are so many
options.

How do you search Sedo without telling them the search term?

(If you want to be pedantic, my query is revealed to Google+, Google
Analytics, Mixpanel, Kissmetrics, Facebook, Cloudfront, Twitter and
BigHugeLabs - although I doubt facebook is in the business of domain name
squatting)

~~~
matt1
Hey again,

I hear what you're saying but there's just too much risk for anyone -- me,
Sedo, whoever, to engage in domain name front running (the official term for
what you're describing). If people knew that Sedo, for example, was
registering domain names based on what terms people were searching for then
people would stop using Sedo. Sedo, in turn, would take a huge long term
financial hit all in exchange for a few domain names. Consider that we're
still talking about Network Solutions doing it and that was almost five years
ago. They permanently damaged their reputation by doing that. It's just not
worth it.

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e1ven
I hope it helps with monetization! It's a potentially useful feature, which
can bring in money to you, and it's not too annoying.

My only real concern that the site seems to have more latency than it did last
time I used it - I'm sure sure if it's due to increased load, or waiting for
the RTT to Sedo, but it's something to keep in mind.

Perhaps you could fill those in with a separate ajax call, so they aren't
necessarily blocking the other results while you wait for sedo?

~~~
matt1
The increased latency is caused by API calls that the app has to make to Sedo
for new queries. I've spent a lot of time optimizing it lately, but agree that
there's still room for improvement. It comes down to a tradeoff: would you
rather get more premium results but have to wait a little while longer or get
less results but have them quickly? For now I've taken the middle road, but
that may change depending on how it affects usage.

Appreciate you bringing it up though and for suggesting alternatives.

~~~
eli
Perhaps you could load fewer premium results beforehand but load the rest via
AJAX?

~~~
matt1
It's actually all done via Ajax that way it doesn't affect the page load time.
The search itself is also done on a separate server that way it doesn't tie up
any of the app's dynos on Heroku (go go JSONP).

I could make an initial API call and get a handful of results, but handling
the remainder would be tricky. For example, let's say that the preliminary
search returns 12 domains and I immediately display them to the user. Ten
seconds later the second Ajax call returns an additional 60 premium domains.
How do I display those to folks in a non-intrusive way? I'm open to
suggestions :)

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ted0
Nice work!

Have you thought about trying to pull in domains from Afternic MLS as well?

