I found a cool, free tool called Domain Name Analyzer (DNA for short.) Thinking back, I can’t remember how I found it. But anyway, I downloaded it and tested it out.

According to the website, DNA is “software for finding the best domain name for your product or business.”

But is it any good?

I used to use Nameboy.com to come up with domain ideas. But that got old after a few times. It’s good to see which versions (.com, .net, etc.) are taken or available, but usually this was out of date. Needless to say, I don’t do much with that site these days.

It got to where I just used godaddy.com’s search, after brainstorming a list of possible domains. Sometimes it took awhile, but it allowed me the creative freedom to get good names. This is still my usual method of domain brainstorming.

So let’s see if Domain Name Analyzer can change my habits…

At first glance, I didn’t care for the software’s interface. It’s kind of plain, but it has little bits of instruction on each screen to guide you along. If it wasn’t for this, I probably would have just closed it and forgot about it.

You’re presented with two main functions: check domain names or construct domain names.

Checking domains involves entering keywords or known domains. Then DNA will get the whois information for them. You can also use this to manage your own domains. Put in your list and it will bring up all the info on them.

Constructing domain names is what I wanted to do. I typed in “articles” in the keyword box since I’m thinking about making an articles site (like ezinearticles.com.)

In mere seconds I was presented with a pretty good list of domains with the word articles in them. My first idea was to go through and delete the crappy ones, as recommended on the site, but then I realized that most of the domains sucked.

So I went through and checked any interesting ones. It checked them pretty fast, but only one good domain was available.

Then a click on “Register Now” took me right to my favorite registrar, godaddy.com. (You can put in whatever one you want and DNA will remember it.)

I checked at godaddy.com and yes, this domain was actually available. There’s a plus!

The site mentioned a “Trademark lookup” where DNA automatically gets rid of any trademarked names at the click of a button, but I didn’t see this magic button.

I was also looking forward to the export/save results functionality. You can save names in a text file or database.

I didn’t care for the txt file, but the Access function was nice. It put the domains into a table in Access, allowing for easy queries of taken or available domains! This might be cool if you do any consulting; you could easily generate a list of possible domain names for a client.

In the future, I’ll probably make use of Domain Name Analyzer. Maybe not all the time, but I see some uses for it.

So check it out and download it free here:

http://www.domainpunch.com/products/dna/

Why is it free?

Probably because they have a “Pro” version of the software, selling for $49. They figure if you like the free version, you’ll love the pro version with extra features.

P.S. I found some more great resources while I was researching DNA. I’ll let you know about them in future posts!

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Yes, internet marketing sucks. Every time I see something that sucks, I’ll post it here. I’ll probably post good stuff too, just to balance things out. I like to be optimistic (not really; I’m a pessimist all the way.)

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