Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

leandomainsearch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 59 posts

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#31

Post by rhizome »

matt1 wrote: post #24
johnfn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because GoDaddy is what most people use doesn't mean it's what most people should use. On top of all the SOPA nonsense, GoDaddy has remarkably sexist and degrading ads. I'd encourage you to set the default registrar to be a different registrar by default - maybe Namecheap?

There's a huge drop off in affiliate revenue from GoDaddy to the next most popular registrar. Making Namecheap default would inconvenience most the users and cause a substantial drop in my revenue. I appreciate where you're coming from, but I'm not sure the pros of switching outweigh the cons.

So, it's not really that most people use GD, but that they offer the highest affiliate rates.

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#33

Post by jbigelow76 »

[deleted] wrote: post #28
matt1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a huge drop off in affiliate revenue from GoDaddy to the next most popular registrar. Making Namecheap default would inconvenience most the users and cause a substantial drop in my revenue. I appreciate where you're coming from, but I'm not sure the pros of switching outweigh the cons.

[deleted]

You're assuming your principles are both universal and correct. The former is not true and latter is debatable.

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#34

Post by j45 »

Very cool, nice to see you have continued to develop the service.

Have you had any thoughts about how you might insulate domain squatters from simply showing up and buying every short domain for common searches?

Also, regarding switching default search registrars... considered making this a paid service? Would help with my question above too.

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#35

Post by matt1 »

j45 wrote: post #34

Very cool, nice to see you have continued to develop the service. Have you had any thoughts about how you might insulate domain squatters from simply showing up and buying every short domain for common searches? Also, regarding switching default search registrars... considered making this a paid service? Would help with my question above too.

There's nothing stopping squatters from registering these domain names other than the fact they would have to register so many. That's part of the beauty of it.

Re: making it a paid service -- how would you charge?

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#36

Post by matt1 »

icode wrote: post #32

When I type in "day" i get: "Oops, Lean Domain Search's search algorithm failed with this search term."

Thanks -- I track these errors and fix them within a day or two. It's a side-effect of how the search works. Over time the number of results that throw this error should drop close to zero.

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#37

Post by lbo »

matt1 wrote: post #17
lbo wrote: post #13

I get a large number of false-positives and, interestingly enough, even more false positives for the same search term when searching from my iPhone. As I click on them all, they stop appearing again, but this is quite an annoying experience. Do you default-to-available if your query to WHOIS times out and nobody has clicked to check that link before?

Hey, I actually figured out a way to fix this and will implement the change within the next several days. False positives should drop from around 10% to around 1% within two weeks.

Awesome. Otherwise the site is excellent.

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#38

Post by bostonpete »

matt1 wrote: post #20
jcc80 wrote: post #14

I've used this tool but not yet purchased any of the favorites I saved. I knew a few domains I wanted to buy so went to LDS and opened up the link to the registrar from there so hopefully credit was given (can't freeload). Only thing I'd change so far is maybe moving the search bar slightly higher on front page, make it and the button bigger and putting light grey text in the search box. But, you've probably thought…

Glad you like it -- I built it to solve one of my own major pain points: it's very hard and time consuming finding quality available domain names for the products I build. As far as the search bar positioning, I'll play around with it and see if an A/B test or two indicates it has an impact. Appreciate the recommendation.

Though I understand the idea, I'm not too familiar with how A/B tests are performed in practice. I would've assumed you'd need a lot of data to get statistically significant results. Is the volume of data that you need to achieve that statistical significance well-understood and do you actually have the traffic to collect that amount of data? (I guess I imagined that it would require huge amounts of data.)

Re: Lean Domain Search Now Checks the Availability of 2,000 Domain Names per Search

#39

Post by j45 »

matt1 wrote: post #35
j45 wrote: post #34

Very cool, nice to see you have continued to develop the service. Have you had any thoughts about how you might insulate domain squatters from simply showing up and buying every short domain for common searches? Also, regarding switching default search registrars... considered making this a paid service? Would help with my question above too.

There's nothing stopping squatters from registering these domain names other than the fact they would have to register so many. That's part of the beauty of it. Re: making it a paid service -- how would you charge?

I think adding a barrier of having to login would at least get rid of the automated searchers/scrapers that want to register all short domains in a profitable domain niche.

Limiting numbers of searches, depth of searches in free/no account vs having an account and/paying?

I'm not advocating for making it a paid service - squatters will probably pay too for a good service, my wishes for LDS are that it stays relevant in search quality and results for a long time and it can't be usurped by a few people with money -- most of who are squatters.

Post reply on HN