NameScavenger.com

[paspro]

I've been playing around with different ways to find domain names that might be worth registering. I've been building tools for my own use but since I have a full-time job I figured that it might be more fun and rewarding to share some of these tools rather than keep them all to myself.

One idea I've had for the few years is to register expired domain names that are still indexed by search engines. Rather than just go through some list that someone else had put together I decided to generate the list myself by searching for specific terms using a search engine of my choice.

The result is what I'm calling NameScavenger. I've just launched it at Name Scavenger. Basically you just enter a search term, choose your search engine (Google, Bing, Yahoo), the number of levels you want to crawl (i.e. level 0 is just the search result urls, level 1 is links from there etc) and the number of search results you care about. NameScavenger takes care of the rest by looking for domain names in the links on each of the pages and checking to see if they are available for registration or not.

I just wanted to share this and was very interested in getting some feedback on changes and/or improvements.

 

[paspro]

Just thought I'd provide a quick update about some new features I've added since I launched the site:

• Instead of starting with a search term you can choose to start with a list of URLs
• Available domains include the url where they were found and the level of the search
• Bug fixes and performance improvements

It is a work in progress so feedback would be very welcome. It's also a little bit like looking for a needle in a haystack so it shouldn't be a surprise if no domain names are found.

NameScavenger.com

 

[tmijs789]

Thanks for posting this.

One idea I've had for the few years is to register expired domain names that are still indexed by search engines. Rather than just go through some list that someone else had put together I decided to generate the list myself by searching for specific terms using a search engine of my choice.

A very useful tool indeed - keep up the good work!

(*not much of a critique, just wanted to acknowledge your efforts)

 

[paspro]

I've received quite a few questions about what Name Scavenger does. I guess it's really not that obvious or straightforward. I've added a FAQ to the site and thought I'd reprint some of the relevant parts here:

Q. What is Name Scavenger?
Name Scavenger, hosted at NameScavenger.com is an innovative application that crawls the web and extracts domain names from links. These domain names are then checked using whois to determine if they are available for registration.

Q. Why did you create Name Scavenger?
There are a lot of different tools and sites that provide suggestions for domain names. These include: lists of expired domains and word combiners. We wanted to take a different approach by flagging domain names that are still accessible via search engines or the web. The logic is simple: domains that are still referenced may have more value because many links to them may exist.

Q. How do I use the Search Engine option?
The "Search Engine" option is similar to a web search query used with web search engines. You begin by entering your keywords (search term), configuring the number of levels the crawler should crawl, the TLDs you're interested in and which search engine to use. You can also limit the number of results returned by the search engine you specify.

Q. What are levels?
Levels is a way to tell the Name Scavenger how many hyperlinks to follow when looking for domain names. level 0=look for domains on each of the web pages the search engine returns, level 1=follow hyperlinks on each of the pages from level 0, etc.

Q. How do I use the Url option?
Sometimes you don't want to use a search engine. You already know which pages you'd like to crawl looking for domain names. In that case the "Url" option is the one to use. Simply specify the number of levels, the TLDs you care about, and provide a list of Urls. Each Url needs to be on its own line in the format of "http://namescavenger.com".

Q. I wait and wait and I don't get any results?
Crawling the web and scavenging for unregistered domains is akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. Sometimes you find something and sometimes you don't. You can be confident that Name Scavenger is working if you see the loading animation. The search results page will automatically refresh every 10 seconds.

 

[andr69]

I've never seen anything similar to this website - the idea of it is truly original. Well done

 

[mwzd]

Nice idea, no needles in my haystacks though.

Tweeted about it.

Cheers!

 

[paspro]

Thanks to all for the kind words :D

There have been some changes and improvements since my last update:
* Select all TLDs (not just com, net, org) or a combination of com, net, org
* Alexa data is now included in the search result to make it easier to determine if the domain is worth anything (Rank, Backlinks, in DMOZ)
* Bug fixes and performance improvements
* GUI improvements