Show HN: A Smart Name Brainstorming And Domain Search Engine

The site appears to work, responds quickly (despite being on Hacker News), so good job. Bookmarked.

Howeveer, it did claim some domains are free when they are not. I searched for "hit feed", it brought up hitfeed.com as free, but it's already registered.

What would you say your site does better than leandomainsearch.com?

i think domains are being claimed free because of high traffic.

i like leandomainsearch. but when i was looking for my domain i ended up using bustaname(synonym search), leandomainsearch(prefixes, suffixes), domainr(country tlds and hacks) and some thesaurus website like rhymezone. that's 4 different sites

i just wanted to combine it all and add something to create fun names formed from merging like groupon as well.

Glad to hear you're a Domainr user! Let me know anything you'd like to be improved on it.

domainr is awesome. i always use it to check across tlds. :)

Wow... Does a good job of suggesting names, but the Twitter & Facebook availability check was a nice surprise. Well done.

glad u liked it

Hi HN,

I mainly built this tool to do an exhaustive search on the primary keyword so that you don't have to settle for secondary keywords.

Feedback/Suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

Nicely done. Here's a similar site I made previously: http://www.domainjig.com

Beyond the shameless self-promotion I found that getting people to use it would take a lot of work, with lots of alternatives out there that have dedicated teams promoting them. On the positive side, I learned a lot from it; but I never made any significant money from it. If you're comfortable sharing your next steps, I'd be interested to know what you're aiming for with this project.

Good luck!

1) Available domains totally broken. Searched for "auction" - it told me auction.com was available, as well as sell.com, sale.com, etc

2) Unlike domai.nr, it will send me to an affiliate (obviously the purpose of the site) even if they don't handle that particular TLD (for example, GoDaddy and .ly)

.com sometimes does not work because of burst load. i am working on adding more registrar for those tlds.

thanks

It suggested some .er domains, which can't actually be purchased, that I'm aware of anyway.

i see, will fix it. thanks

Also, .ar domains which cannot be purchased from anywhere outside of the TLD country.

will do, thanks

The tool suggested i.pe domain to me as available. My company is called IPe and I got extremely excited... But, no deal. The domain is already taken.

sorry, there seems to be some issue with some tlds.

also, .bd domains cannot be purchased exclusively. You need to prefix com/net/org before the bd TLD

thanks will do

Same issue with .ly domains

Useful. Thanks.

One issue I noticed is that I cannot "scroll down for more" when using my iPad. I tried a two-finger drag. No dice. My suggestion would be to make the "scroll down" text clickable to reveal more.

sure. thanks

I really like the similar suggestion.

I am not sure of the "Lets be friends" in red text in the bottom of the search. The social buttons might be enough. Besides cleaning up the layout, its really good.

thanks. glad u liked it

I'm not seeing any results. My guess is the results should show under the four colored bars right?. I've tried different searches and clicked on the examples and still nothing.

yes the results must come under the colored bars and some above it. which browser are u using?

Same problem here, running Chrome 23.0.1271.97 m on Windows 7

i have fixed it. you might have to clear your browser cache though. thanks

I can confirm it works now. Thanks for the quick fix.

What was causing the problem and how did you fix it?

it was a javascript error. somehow cookie containing tlds to search for was not being set correctly (for the first request). added fallback logic.

This looks pretty cool, but I also have the impression that we may be DDoS'ing some service by 'burst' searching through this tool. Is it the case?

i use dns and whois queries only

I tried it and it told me a domain was available, I click through, select godaddy only to be told that it was already taken.

its happening intermittently because of burst load on server.

i am working on a fix that gives an error instead of saying its available.

can you tell me which tld was it?

Here's a bug I found after scrolling down a bit:

http://i.imgur.com/m1BSY.png

strange, i was not able to replicate it, trying the same query. thanks, will look into it.

I selected several TLDs if that helps.

nice job, If I may suggest an improvement: after selecting a domain the "not available" for twitter/facebook is not clear.

For example, "foo.io" is an available domain, while facebook and twitter are not.

I imagine it checked for @foo and /foo but maybe I'd be interested in @foo_io and /foo.io and I can't tweak this, nor tell what the app checked.

yes it checks for @foo and /foo currently. i will correct the messaging. checking for @foo_io and /foo.io is a great suggestion. will add them as well. thanks!

1. Clean up the layout: Less is more!

2. My favorite flavor was fun because those new names could actually be trademarked.

thanks for replying :) i didn't quite understand what u meant by cleaning the layout. i am trying to utilize all the space available for showing more results.

The landing page has too much useless junk on it. My advice would be that unless it adds to the actual functionality of the page to eliminate any. If you're having problem rate every element on the page on a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being "fluff" and 10 being "must have" and then cut everything that's 9 or less.

Also either hire someone who has an art direction background to layout the page or use a template. And again, more colors aren't better.

great advice. i will use your technique. i am not good in web design. do u think i should add a carousel instead of those 4 boxes?

no

Nick is on the money! Less is more — your concept is A+ — it's all about the search box and some minor explanation in 25 words or less, don't try and dress that up...

Search on "group coupon" gives me available gron.com, but on GoDaddy it is not available...

i think this is due to temporary burst load on the server. will check on it.

yup worked fine this time

I think "show unavailable" should not be checked by default. Very good site though...

done. thanks

.id results show available but can't be found on any three domain seller.

will look into it. thanks

Plenty of the results are "buy" but are actually part of godaddy auction

the red "buy" are unavailable but could be for sale. the green ones are available. u can uncheck the flag 'show unavailable' next to search button. should i make it unchecked by default? let me know what do u think?

some are green but are in an auction

oh, that is happening due to traffic burst. will look into it.

You list a .za domain, but it should really be .co.za

fixed

fixed the .ca domains, thanks

.gb?

fixed