Ajaxed Domain Names Search

31 Comments

by Michael Arrington on November 13, 2005

Instant Domain Search is a great, simple Ajax tool for finding available .com and .net domain names.

Enter a desired domain, and results appear instantly as you type. There are links to Yahoo and Register.com if a domain is available and you’d like to register it. If the domain is not available there are links to the whois registration information.

This is a useful and timesaving tool for people who buy a lot of domains. One thing I’d like to see is a backorder link for domains that are already registered.

Comments

Thibauld Favre - November 14th, 2005 at 1:23 am PST

Actually, this site is not so useful because the whois database on which the request are made lies in a “local” Mysql database that is not updated (see http://hartshor..._domain_search/). I found this derivative of Instant Domain Search to be much more useful : http://www.chri...uri.com/domain/
it is a little bit slower but the results are more reliable.

Cheers,

Thibauld Favre

Beau Hartshorne - November 14th, 2005 at 8:19 am PST

Good suggestion, I just added a backorder link.

Michael Arrington (@arrington) - November 14th, 2005 at 10:37 am PST

Thibauld, do you know the creator of the derivative? Beau, can you access that whois more easily? Taking an extra second to do this is ok if the results are more inclusive.

Antony Van Couvering - November 14th, 2005 at 11:29 am PST

If you like this, you should really try Domainsbot at http://www.domainsbot.com. As well as instantly appearing availability, you get instantly appearing alternative suggestions based on synonyms that you can edit. Yes, you can backorder; yes, you can order names at auction from a number of aucitioneers as well. And the system learns as people use it, giving better results each time.

Beau Hartshorne - November 14th, 2005 at 11:42 am PST

I first noticed the derivative in a comment on the Ajaxian post. Its author said that they were getting results via Yahoo. (I’m guessing by scraping.)

Yahoo is a whois.sc API subscriber. Whois.sc charges at least 0.007 cents per API query. I’ve already handled over 200,000 queries in November; this API subscription would get very expensive for me. I don’t want to scrape Yahoo’s results, with my volume I’d expect them to block my service after a few hours.

Once this moves over to a new server (sometime this week), I’ll be able to get the zone file updates at least daily. Thanks for the feedback, please keep it coming!

Michael Arrington (@arrington) - November 14th, 2005 at 12:48 pm PST

I’d use the API to get really fresh data, and put up adsense ads to cover costs (should more than cover it). The domain registrars also will have affiliate links so you’ll get paid when someone registers a domain.

Beau Hartshorne - November 14th, 2005 at 1:29 pm PST

At this pace, I can see hitting 3,000,000 queries per month. That’s over $20,000 in API queries. I haven’t had *that* much luck with Google ads. I spoke with a very nice fellow at whois.sc, and for a number of reasons there wasn’t anything they could do to help me.

I’ve looked into a few affiliate programs, but haven’t found many that don’t redirect the user four times before they get to a registration screen. I want to keep the user experience as clean as I can.

Steve - November 15th, 2005 at 3:44 am PST

I think it is a neat way to do domain spinning; fast too! I would like to see a spiced up version with graphics around it. It’s a little plain right now, but fun, and a neat way to use ajax.
makes me think of relative content searches on services such as flickr. This could used to sort tags in technorati, articles on sites, maybe a tie in with google search.. hmm..