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You should do a "whois" lookup for the domain. The return code for a 'get' request on the domain has no bearing on its availability -- many parked domains do not even have DNS configured, let alone HTTP.

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I'd be wary of doing automated whois lookups, which might be considered abusive / against terms of service depending on which server you hit.

Good point. This doesnt sound like a quick fix.

Very true. This requires a little more work than my current hack. I'll see if there is a whois package for node...

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