The 10,000 Most Popular Topics on the Internet By Domain Count

Matt Mazur · May 21, 2012

Hey guys,

I recently conducted a study which looked at the most popular topics on the internet according to the number of domain names registered for that topic.

In theory, the more popular the topic, the more in demand those domain names are and the more valuable they should be to your portfolios.

I conducted the analysis by first calculating the top prefixes and suffixes and then working backwards to figure out what the topics were. For example, I looked at all of the domain names that ended with "spot", figured out what the topic was (ie, "car" in "carspot.com"), and then added up the totals to see which topics occurred most frequently. The results looked at the .com zone file specifically and did not look at other zone files, though the results should be fairly consistent.

Here are the top 25 results:

1. web
2. net
3. art
4. tech
5. cloud
6. shop
7. home
8. media
9. world
10. pro
11. design
12. mobile
13. life
14. city
15. tv
16. blog
17. travel
18. online
19. it
20. star
21. link
22. info
23. power
24. app
25.

You can view the full results here if you're curious: The 10,000 Most Popular Topics on the Internet By Domain Count.

m-i-k-e · May 21, 2012

Come on, that would be an impossibly long task.

co2 · May 21, 2012

Impressed with the work Matt, how long did this little exercise take you?!!!!:blink:

Matt Mazur · May 21, 2012

Hey, I'm a software developer and wrote a number of scripts to analyze the zone file for me over a period of several days.

m-i-k-e · May 21, 2012

Matt Mazur said:
Hey, I'm a software developer and wrote a number of scripts to analyze the zone file for me over a period of several days.

Pretty cool! It kind of still looks like a list of suffixes/prefixes though doesn't it.

co2 · May 21, 2012

I was not challenging you, I was just curious as to how long it took?!!!

Matt Mazur · May 22, 2012

co2 said:
I was not challenging you, I was just curious as to how long it took?!!!

I didn't think you were

Question for you guys: #3 is "art" which is clearly not something that a whole lot of people are interested in. Is the high number of registered domains dedicated to art a reflection of the type of people who would be in the market for art-related domain names? Meaning, did domain investors go and buy thousands of art related domain names hoping to turn a profit selling to rich art connoisseurs?

co2 · May 22, 2012

"Art which is clearly not something that a whole lot of people are interested in". Art is an enormous market Matt, so many subjects from paintings, to pop art and so many people collect it.

Aaronzheng · May 22, 2012

oh? really? It is quite interesting!

eyedomainous · May 22, 2012

Very nice!

Thanks for adding 'Big Data' value to domain names.

Rep.

NPer · May 22, 2012

Nice work. :tu:

:wave:

MikeRibby · May 22, 2012

Works well except half the domains that appear green "available" aren't....

Matt Mazur · May 22, 2012

MikeRibby said:
Works well except half the domains that appear green "available" aren't....

If you click on an available result and it turns out to be registered, Lean Domain Search remembers that and won't show it again in future searches for you or anyone else. Between that and some other improvements that are in the works, the percentage that are actually registered should drop down to 1-2% in the next few weeks.

Any other recommendations on what I can do to improve Lean Domain Search?

Fork · May 23, 2012

Hey Matt! Just want to let you know I've been using Lean Domain Search a ton since finding this article. Thanks for the great tool

Are the top 10,000 words used as prefixes/suffixes in the domain search? How are the search results ordered? And, most importantly, how the hell is it so fast?

Matt Mazur · May 23, 2012

Fork said:
Hey Matt! Just want to let you know I've been using Lean Domain Search a ton since finding this article. Thanks for the great tool

Are the top 10,000 words used as prefixes/suffixes in the domain search? How are the search results ordered? And, most importantly, how the hell is it so fast?

The Lean Domain Search results are ordered by the popularity of the prefix and suffix. If you'd like to read more about this analysis (which was a precursor to calculating the most popular topics), you can check it out here: Calculating The 5,000 Most Frequently Used Domain Name Prefixes and Suffixes. Basically, I used the most popular Lean Domain Search queries to figure out the most popular prefixes and suffixes based on the registered domain names in the .com zone file.

For anyone else interested in checking out Lean Domain Search (which makes it ridiculously easy to find quality available .com domain names), you can check out the homepage here: www.leandomainsearch.com

Would love to hear your guys recommendations on how to improve it.

Fork · May 23, 2012

Thanks! But you missed the most important question

I assume you've indexed the zone file and are doing availability searches based on that? If so, what method did you use to index it? Don't be afraid to share all the technical details!

I've got zone file access and have been a bit stuck on how best to index it for speedy availability searches in my own tools, tools I'd like to release once they're working well and can withstand more than just me using it.

I'll be sure to keep an eye out for improvements, but you're already doing a great job at what you're doing.

mwzd · May 23, 2012

It would have been better if you restricted yourself to dictionary words, lot of the 'topics' don't really make sense.

But thank you for your effort and for sharing the info, must have taken a lot of doing.

Cheers!

briguy · May 23, 2012

mwzd said:
It would have been better if you restricted yourself to dictionary words, lot of the 'topics' don't really make sense.

But thank you for your effort and for sharing the info, must have taken a lot of doing.

Cheers!

Kinda tought the same like why are these listed..#2007, #6014 #4027 ?

Fork · May 23, 2012

briguy said:
Kinda tought the same like why are these listed..#2007, #6014 #4027 ?

I've done a few dozen searches using Lean Domain Search and have never actually come across those in the search itself.

The domains that appear in the search have prefixes and suffixes that make sense. If they aren't dictionary words, they're common acronyms like "diy", etc.

briguy · May 23, 2012

Fork said:
I've done a few dozen searches using Lean Domain Search and have never actually come across those in the search itself.

The domains that appear in the search have prefixes and suffixes that make sense. If they aren't dictionary words, they're common acronyms like "diy", etc.

Thanks Fork!

Yes I can understand acroymns and suffixes/prefixes just couldn't grasp "zf" , "lz" ?

Don't get me wrong..I am happy that I came across this thread...love the OP links.

.X. · May 23, 2012

Matt Mazur,

That is one smart, very nice proggy you have created, very well done.

Matt Mazur · May 23, 2012

mwzd said:
It would have been better if you restricted yourself to dictionary words, lot of the 'topics' don't really make sense.

But thank you for your effort and for sharing the info, must have taken a lot of doing.

Cheers!

Hey, some are abbreviations and acronyms that we don't recognize because we're not familiar with that niche. I am positive that if you Googled around for terms that are questionable, you will discover that they are legitimate subject areas.

baseballworld · May 23, 2012

10k. hmm. Not a task I would take on.

GoKaizen · May 23, 2012

Thanks this is helpful!

Matt Mazur · Jun 8, 2012

Hey guys, quick update:

I just added 450 new search results to Lean Domain Search, bringing the total domain names checked per search up to 2,500. Should make it even easier to find great available domain names.

As always, if you have any suggestions on how to improve the site, please let me know.

The 10,000 Most Popular Topics on the Internet By Domain Count

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