Ready to get into domaining, or just looking for a better way to find the domain names?

There’s a site out there called Findeteer, that makes it very easy to find the right expired domains.

It’s a simple search box allowing you to put in a word and select if you want to see recently expired domains, about to expire domains, or both. Your search will probably return a LONG list of domains containing your chosen word, but you can filter the results by length or choose “exclude numbers,” which should help cut out the crap names.

Findeteer will list the domain name, expiration date, and quick links to check Whois data, indexed pages, and backlinks for the domain. If there was a PageRank checker too, it would be perfect.

Note: There is a PR checker at the bottom of the page, but if it was integrated, it would probably be much sweeter! But it would probably slow down page loads, which would suck!

The other link is to “buy now” which forwards you to what seems to be their sister site, Buyeteer. You could buy there or just go to your current registrar and get the name.

Overall I’d say this is a useful tool for domainers going after expired domains.

It could also help out if you can’t decide on the right domain name. Maybe someone else had a good one and let it expire, and you can find it there.

Update: Now that I think about it, what would make this site a lot better is if the site could read your mind and automatically narrow down the list of results to the ones that you would like! I’ll be looking for that in Web 3.0!

[This post originally appeared at InternetMarketingSucks.com]

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Ever get sick of doing whois checks on domains in an old web interface? Well I’m sure you got sick of it, but did you ever think of Whois 2.0? That’s exactly what Domain Tools has for us at Psychic Whois, a new, Ajaxified, Web 2.0 whois lookup.

It’s great because it’s just one simple page with lots of functionality. It will predict what domain you want to lookup and tell you which TLDs are taken/available. It even helps you pick a domain name with all the “psychic” predictions that keep popping up. And if you want to make a change, just backspace and start typing again. No back-button necessary!

Once you get past all the jazzy new features and click on a URL, it takes you to the comprehensive whois page with all the answers. I might start using this for all my domain searches from now on

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It really is. It seems like a great concept, but it has a few drawbacks. Significant drawbacks…

Privacy is billed as a way to keep your information as registrant private. And it may keep it private at most whois websites. But it will only keep the average person from finding your info. The people that you don’t want to see your info are the ones who will be able to find it!

For example, a simple phone call to the registrar will probably get you whatever you want to know. And even better, Alexa just ignores privacy. Head over to alexa.com and type in your URL - on the overview page it will list all of your contact info!

There are also some tools out there, free of charge, that will show other URLs hosted on the same server. If you aren’t careful, that could be a dead giveaway.

Also, if you are doing something illegal, domain privacy won’t do you any good. But if you are trying to crack down on someone doing something illegal, it just adds another hassle you have to deal with.

Don’t waste your money. Signing up for domain privacy is pointless.

If you want to learn more, go through and read the legalese in the domain privacy agreement!

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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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