
How to find a short domain name - dwyer
http://www.zegup.com/
======
matt1
A few years back I built Domain Pigeon, a similar tool, that generated web
2.0-style domain names and made them available to visitors. One of my big
lessons learned from that experience was that web 2.0 style domain names are
NOT good domain names. More often than not people can't remember them and when
they can, they misspell it and if they can spell it, it's only because someone
had to spell it out when telling it to them.

I recently launched a follow up to Domain Pigeon called Lean Domain Search
which I think handles the problem a lot better [1]. Rather than generating
random words, it pairs your search phrase with 1,500+ other keywords and
instantly shows you which are available. In this way, every domain it
generates is a combination of two or more actual words which makes it much
easier to remember and explain to people.

By all means explore and see what your options are, but try to pick a name
that will be easy for people to remember and easy to spell.

[1] <http://www.leandomainsearch.com>

~~~
larrys
"web 2.0 style domain names are NOT good domain names. More often than not
people can't remember them and when they can, they misspell it and if they can
spell it, it's only because someone had to spell it out when telling it to
them"

Agree 100%.

I'd like to give my positive experience with leandomainsearch.com.

I used it when coming up with potential domains for a client (that was
referred by a VC - a startup ready to launch with a new domain basically.).

Although the client ended up buying a domain (for sale) that I also suggested,
I didn't tell them which names I found that were "free" essentially and which
names they would have to buy from an owner. Or any pricing. I didn't want to
color their opinion by creating a halo around the names available for
purchase.

The majority of the ideas I got for available domains were from LDS. (In all
fairness I also curated that list based on my knowledge since if you've used
LDS you know it presents an overwhelming number of possibilities.)

The clients budget was about $20,000 for a domain purchase. In the end we
bought two domains (one the one they wanted and one which was a typo of the
one they wanted) for about $3500 total.

In my opinion the LDS names were as good as the ones the client wanted to buy.
In some ways I thought they were better (but of course it's not my startup and
maybe I was rated them higher because I choose them..).

The idea that I gave them when considering the final list (which took them
several weeks to decide on) was to go out on the street and run the names by
potential clients and consumers on this particular site and to see which names
resonated with them. That allowed them to hone in on a great name at a
reasonable price.

In any case even though they didn't go with the LDS name it was very valuable
in the process.

~~~
sounds
I'm learning so much from this discussion. I'll throw in my data point (I
believe it's relevant):

I ran shell scripts on 10 nodes with fast backbone connections, making DNS
queries of all possible 4-letter and 5-letter .com's. Obviously, if the domain
doesn't NXDOMAIN, it has been taken.

At the time (before domain squatting was shut down) all legal 4-letter domains
were taken.

From the NXDOMAINs, I ran a much slower whois script to see if the domain was
registered but missing a DNS entry.

From that final list of unclaimed domains, I was quickly able to spot the one
I wanted.

~~~
larrys
"domain squatting was shut down"

No such thing as what you are saying. You are probably referring to the
penalties that are assessed for domain tasting whereby a registrar is
penalized if they return to many domains relative to the ratio of registered
domains (registrars also pay more money to ICANN depending on how they handle
this as well).

Much to much work to do the way you are doing it. You need to get a copy of
the zone files there are people with access to that (we have access but we
don't sell access others do though for nominal charges).

~~~
sounds
Thanks for the great insights!

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jasonkester
Am I right to be suspicious of this service if the best name it could find for
their own domain was zegup?

~~~
moonchrome
>babof.com is available

Yey !

~~~
sebastianavina
so do babof, babef,...

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tokenadult
How do we know that as these searches are executed that the domain names don't
become unavailable, because someone parks on them? That historically has been
the problem with domain-name searches. I'd like an absolute guarantee that the
searching is done in a manner that doesn't alert registrars or their cronies
to new domain names to park on before running many searches here.

The application is a text-searching application, so I was a bit startled to
see "consonant" misspelled as "constonant" throughout the pull-down menus.
Usually I expect programmers who work with text string-matching to be
attentive to details of natural language text.

~~~
SkyMarshal
That was my first thought too. Any time I search for a domain name these days,
my process goes something like:

1\. Enter it into a web browser, see if it's in use or parked

2\. If not, run whois on it at the commandline.

3\. If not, decide whether I want to buy it. If so, do so right away,
otherwise assume it will be lost in a day or so.

And I'm not even 100% sure I can trust the browser search, depending on what
the DNS server I happen to be on does with failed lookups.

~~~
pg
You can safely use <http://instantdomainsearch.com>. It was written by a YC
alum. Lots of companies we've funded have found names there.

~~~
larrys
That appears to be using nslookup (edit-"esq") to see if the domain resolves
as a result of a test that I just ran. (Tried a name not in the zone file that
IS taken (4L .com) - edit: it said it was available. Then tried a name that
wasn't in the zone file and it took some time to determine if it was
available. If it was comparing to the zone file there would be essentially no
delay it would be a simple search. If I wanted to prove this I could register
a name NOW, do the dns, and then do a query but I don't have time to do that.
The zone file is only available once per day for download.

Also, it doesn't work for anything other than .com.

And if you hit "search" it sends you to godaddy.

All in all I think it makes more sense to simply find a dns server that you
can trust OR get a hold of the zone file and query that (safest way actually).
My personal feeling though is that this is all a non-issue.

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shocks
I felt a bit limited by this, so I've just knocked up a similar tool with far
more flexibility. Still actively developing it, but it's far quicker already.

<http://dev.mindfuzz.net/domain/>

Edit: Grammar.

~~~
larrys
Much better. I like this. Reminds me of when I did the same thing years ago
with regexs to grab 3/4 letter .com (really there were so many available back
then you had to whittle the list down).

~~~
shocks
Thanks! I'm looking at adding more tld's and words/synonyms.

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pg_bot
You should be focusing on the quality of the domain and not the length. This
point is clearly illustrated when you use this service, as almost every domain
generated is awful. While it is true that a domain can be too long, you will
certainly find better domain names by looking around 8-14 characters instead
of 4-7.

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meow
Takes so long to generate first 50 names even when searching with just the
defaults... looks like they don't really cache anything..

~~~
clone1018
Cache random results?

~~~
shingen
No such thing as a random result when you have static selection boxes defining
specific input. The results are obviously restrained by what letter
combinations you pick (ie finite).

You could make an argument that caching all the possible combinations would be
unreasonable for what's likely a low cost setup. However, I'd argue in favor
of caching with both a popular and a simple reduction scheme.

Could speed it up radically by just caching on the first letter / number.

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Kiro
It should be possible to randomize. I'm only getting domain names starting
with ba.

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WA
I got this error a little later, when the script was already running for a
while:

Error Connecting To Server: whois.crsnic.net

Maybe you should not use "whois" but just a simple "host" or "ping" to resolve
whether or not a domain is free. When in doubt, you can still do an "whois",
but for a heuristic approach, it would be waaay faster.

~~~
ericabiz
Faster, but inaccurate. There are plenty of domains that are registered, but
the DNS doesn't resolve. That doesn't mean they are available to register!

~~~
gravitronic
When I wrote a domain searcher script what I did was filter first by names
that return are resolvable, and then whois the remainder. Reduces load on the
dependent whois server whose terms of service usually say "don't run scripts
against me"

~~~
WA
That's exactly the approach I tried to suggest: Find as many correct replies
first, because there certainly are hosts which names can be resolved and try
the whois-approach on everything else.

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ck2
It's probably perfectly honest but this almost feels like a turk exercise to
get other people to find short names for you.

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RuggeroAltair
Bah, it doesn't even randomize the access. I put consTonant consTonant and of
the million possibilities it started checking all the bb___ ones... not so
useful if they show just 50 and the only thing they allow you to do is to keep
going with the next 50...

I wonder who designed the algorithm...

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dreeves
Related: <http://messymatters.com/nominology> (discusses desiderata for names:
evocativity, brevity, greppability, googlability, pronounceability,
spellability, verbability)

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ohashi
[http://www.kevinohashi.com/17/04/2011/other-24000-available-...](http://www.kevinohashi.com/17/04/2011/other-24000-available-
brandables-com-domains-full-list) 24000 5 letter 'brandables'

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youlost_thegame
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but what's up with the letter Q?

~~~
drblast
Maybe it's like scrabble where you'd always want a u afterward.

It's a rather odd constraint given the other options.

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johnstalcup
this thing outputs crap. every single name/domain name generator i've seen has
been underwhelming, including this one.

do this: * use an emotional connotation dictionary to classify a bunch of
poems. * for each emotion category train a markov chain. * allow users to
select a couple of emotions, then combine those emotion's markov chains and
generate text.

~~~
alanfalcon
I have an iPhone program called "Inspiro" which generates phrases, story
ideas, etc. Great for improv or a random laugh. Got my blog domain idea
"syncing dreams" from it, and I'm happy with that. No, it isn't checking for
domain availability of course, but the combinations are unusual enough that
you'll probably find the domain available. A few Inspiro results:

charmless koala

whispering playgrounds

day-glow demons

juicy naked mole rats

forging ice

You can generate different kinds of nonsense, like:

ruthlessly sneezing on perfect phrases

cheerfully grabbing handfuls of fascinated buildings repeating naughty garden
hoses

So, fun for strange ideas that make your brain get creative. My favorite tool
for generating actual domain names though is easily
<http://impossibility.org/>

~~~
johnstalcup
that sounds pretty good.

this is kind of a tangent but kind of related: you can use a reverse
dictionary (<http://www.onelook.com/reverse-dictionary.shtml>) as a sort of
"multi word thesaurus" when trying to condense a couple of ideas down into one
word

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drostie
This is beautiful, but it's such a shame that US law enforcement have been
stealing .com domains from people for things that their users have done. We've
had a bunch of Hacker News threads and I don't want to resurrect old beasts of
that sort, but some option for non dot-com names would be wonderful.
(Especially because .com reminds me of 1999-2001 at this point and it seems
like we designers should perhaps be treating it as a ten-year-old fashion.)

~~~
drewonstuff
I couldn't disagree more with that we should be treating .com as passe. While
.me or whatever is "cool", the majority of the world still relates to .com's
the most. I'm in Taiwan right now and the people here probably have no idea
what a .me or a .it is. They are using .com.tw, not .me.tw (and yes, of course
I understand that .me is from Montenegro and this would never be possible).
And the "reminds me of 1999-2001" just sounds silly...it goes without saying
that there have been thousands of successful .com's since 2001, like the one
you are looking at right now.

~~~
brianbreslin
Actually .me.tw would be possible, just as there are .gov.tw etc. so .com in
the .com.tw is not a top-level domain (.tw is), it is a 2nd level domain in
this case. so there could be xyz.tw just like .co was originally exclusive to
government of colombia and you could only get 2nd level domains, ex
domain.com.co etc.

~~~
drewonstuff
thanks for clarifying, I edited-in that line in () mainly to qualify that I
was sort of joking about the .me.tw. I now know it wasn't a joke.

------
leejw00t354
On some domains I get a invalid domain message:

bbaaw.com is an invalid domain name

Any ideas on why this is appearing or what it means?

~~~
philjr
looks like a bug

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mmorey
This coupled with the importXML feature of Google Docs is very useful.

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damusnet
Does it mean that all 4-letter-.com domain names are taken?

~~~
gigq
Yep, all 4 letter domains were registered back in 2007
([http://www.dotsauce.com/2007/11/02/four-letter-domains-
all-r...](http://www.dotsauce.com/2007/11/02/four-letter-domains-all-
registered/)).

Of course domains expire or are sold between owners so getting a 4 letter
domain is still possible.

~~~
guylhem
And you can get them for cheap. Got one .com as recently as last year, with
the .org as a freebie. I'm now considering selling my 3 letters/numbers domain
name - .net and .org.

~~~
brador
How much was the .com? I've seen offered prices of $5K+ for fairly generic 4
letter domains...lot's of speculators buying and holdnig I guess...

~~~
guylhem
Speculation- yes. I paid just below 100, and I considered that a tad
expansive.

It's not a word but it is easy to say and to remember, and I needed one for a
project, so I got it thinking I could reuse it later.

------
davidbanham
That's not how you spell consonant.

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opendomain
We have many short domains: if you want to take on holly wood- you could use
Free.TV or if you want a communication startup, try XG.org, Free-fi.com,
wusb.com, or wide-fi.com. News site? Syndi.com, bloog.com. Hyperlocal? 4ny.com
or 4dc.com. Keyword? Liposculpture.com non-profit? Manna.org My favorite for
Big Data is NoSQL.com

While this post is a plug for my open source project OpenDomain - please note
that we are not for profit. We have given domain such as Drupal.com,
OsCon.com, OpenAjax.org, and Ecmascript.org all for FREE

EDIT: spelling errors edit 2: please do not downvote - as I said before we are
not for profit and we support open source. I would love for anyone on hacker
news to use any of our domains

