

Show HN: Find available domains related to your keyword - captaindoe
https://confirm.io

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matt1
Hey David, I run a similar service called Lean Domain Search [1] and was
excited to check out your service.

A few ideas:

\- If you're willing to consider limiting the TLDs to just .coms, you can then
use the .com zone file to check the availability of domains much much faster
than methods. Using this technique Lean Domain Search is able to check the
availability of 5,000 domains in about a second. I wrote about how to get
access to the VeriSign zone file here [2]. Parsing it so your app can access
it in real time is tricky, but I can go into more detail over email if you
want to explore that route.

\- One thing to think about is whether figuring out the search volume is that
important for your users. If it's a challenge getting that data from SEMrush
or if it's slow or if it just clutters up the interface, consider dropping it
and focusing on the quality of the suggestions. More information is not
necessarily better for users (it depends what problem you are solving and for
whom).

\- If you want to a quick list of prefixes and suffixes to pair the user's
search term with, I previously analyzed all registered .com's to figure out
what the most common ones are. That list is available here if you're
interested [3].

\- I wound recommend identifying a specific pain point that a specific group
of users have that isn't addressed well by existing tools and focus all of
your efforts on solving that. The more focused you make your app, this better.

Props on getting users to tweet about the app to show more suggestions. I used
to do that with Lean Domain Search and it works really, really well.

I'm happy to chat over email if you'd like. See my profile for contact
details.

Best of luck with this -- congrats for launching!

[1] [http://www.leandomainsearch.com](http://www.leandomainsearch.com)

[2] [http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/16-how-to-get-access-
to...](http://www.leandomainsearch.com/blog/16-how-to-get-access-to-the-
official-verisign--com-zone-file)

[3] [http://www.leandomainsearch.com/top-domain-name-prefixes-
and...](http://www.leandomainsearch.com/top-domain-name-prefixes-and-suffixes)

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Isofarro
Looks to be using Google's Keyword tool to get related keywords (or possible
latent semantic index scraping).

Two issues I've found after using it twice:

* It returns exact-match like domains, those got decimated in October 2012. (low quality content on exact match domains), and they are proving more difficult to rank related to "keyword over-optimisation" because the keyword already appears in the domain name. Creating content trying not not to overrepeat that keyword in the slug, or path, or content is awkward and unnatural. Better instead to go for a brandable domain rather than a colourless exact match domain

* The suggestions don't take into account trademarks and existing company names. So making domain suggestions of WalmartStock.TLD and WalmartLocations.TLD, and even Walmart.bix is treading in murky territory.

~~~
nmjohn
> The suggestions don't take into account trademarks and existing company
> names.

Realistically how could the author avoid that? Should he/she compile a list of
every trademark registered and not suggest domains containing any of them?

That is a responsibility for the user.

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redmaverick
Great User Interface!

My feedback based on a bit of experience in this space [1]

1\. Consider sticking to just .com and .net Most people don't care about the
remaining extensions.

2\. Increase the list of results to greater than 100 so the end user has
greater choice in selecting the right domain name.

3\. Don't show the list of domains that are not available. Only show
unregistered domains.

4\. Search volume keyword based domains are usually long. If you want only
.com then it is harder still as most are taken.

[1] _I built a similar feature into DomainMongrel.com_

[2] _It is similar to Lean Domain Search except that it uses a prediction
algorithm to find related prefixes and suffixes.

I followed Matt1's advice from his blog and used zone files to make sure that
the domains are available._

[2] [http://domainmongrel.com/generator](http://domainmongrel.com/generator)

------
jffry

      $ host confirm.io
      confirm.io has address 46.246.95.37 
    

Interestingly, [http://blockchain.info/ip-
address/46.246.95.37](http://blockchain.info/ip-address/46.246.95.37)

~~~
bsilvereagle
Do you check ips against the blockchain for the novelty of it, or is there
another reason?

~~~
jffry
It was down, so I !g'ed it, and it was the first result:
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=46.246.95.37](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=46.246.95.37)

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dperfect
Not surprisingly, most of the results for common words/phrases seem to be
unavailable. For a simple domain search, that's expected, but not so much for
a suggestion tool.

If I'm going to wait for a small handful of domain suggestions, I'd prefer to
only see what _is_ available (which may require a lot more queries on the back
end, but would improve the user experience in my opinion).

Also, I've gotta throw in a shameless plug for my own domain suggestion tool
for new gTLDs:

[http://endless.domains](http://endless.domains)

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jpetersonmn
Page doesn't load for me...

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kirchhoff
Seconded..

~~~
gautambay
Me too. perhaps they didn't prepare for the traffic spurt from HN?

~~~
captaindoe
That was indeed the root cause of the problem. I hadn't expected the volume of
visitors HN sent, and unfortunately I wasn't prepared for it.

Apache hit the memory limits constantly, and in the end I had change to nginx.
The service has been working fine for a couple of hours, so if you're still
interested you can try it out.

Apologies for not being prepared.

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Mandatum
Aaaand it's dead.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B24LOWH...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:B24LOWHJBOkJ:https://confirm.io/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au)

------
kevinkimball
this is cool. I just tweeted about this:

[https://twitter.com/kkmbl/status/486961565690646528](https://twitter.com/kkmbl/status/486961565690646528)

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arasmussen
When I type in a keyword and press enter, nothing happens. I have to use my
mouse to click a button? Should probably fix that :)

