Domaining gets a pretty bad reputation. And I can understand why – you dont need to be a rocket scientist to figure out how dodgy some domainers are. But on the other hand, buying and selling domains, speculating or testing keyword rich domains are part and parcel of the web.
If you are into Black Hat SEO, or into Affiliate Marketing, domain purchasing is potentially a daily business. I am not going to go into the merits or issues with buying keyword rich domains for either SEO or black hat purposes, nor will I discuss why affiliates need these tools. Any smart SEO will own at least a few gems in their life, either for profit or for fun. What I would like to share is two absolutely awesome Firefox powered tools that can really ease the domain discovery process.
Domain Lookup
Domain Lookup
Ever read a phrase online and think: “that would make a great domain name”? Domain Lookup is a Firefox extension that helps you discover desirable domain names while surfing the web.
Domain Lookup offers three ways to search for domains in your browser:
- Contextual Search
- ‘Server Not Found’ lookup
- Search Box lookup
Not only that, it also has over 60 domain registrars plugged in and ready to go. I think that one of the reviews of the extension pretty much covers it:
You just have to love this tool if you are a domainer – find a phrase, right click, buy! Does it get easier than that?
Take for example, I am reading a news story about an upcoming Disney Film, The Princess and The Frog, and my affiliate hat says “hmm there could be potential in an affiliate site for DVD’s, toys and stuff related to the film. Wonder if the domain is available? ” So all I do is select the text, and right click. Presto! A new tab appears with my chosen domain registrar, running the domain lookup.
The Princess and The Frog - Interesting Domain
The other really useful feature is being able to grab domains that may not exist, but have a link to. While you are running through your normal browsing behaviour and follow a link, what would be your response if you see a “server not found” message? If it’s from a really good website, I would probably be tempted to grab that domain if available. This happens more often than you think – when common misspells find themselves linked to, without a website available. With Domain Lookup, you have the option to check immediately if the domain is available.
Server Not Found - Lets Grab that Domain!
Domains By Volume
Although Domain Look up is pretty cool in its own right, its a tool intended for single domain research. Sometimes a guy just cant get enough and wants to grab loads of domains at one go. Or wants to know what the keyword volume potential is.
Domains By Volume
Domains By Volume is a Greasemonkey Script that was built to finally simplify the process of finding keyword based domain names. Built as an add-on to Google’s Keyword Tool that is used by so many to find relevant keywords and their associated search volume.
In essence, check for .com/.net/.org availability in real-time while on GKT, with the capability to register at either GoDaddy or NameCheap. Installation is pretty straight forward. Once you have, you should be able to see the Domain Look up options on the Google keyword tool:
Integration with Google Keyword Tool
I dont think I have to explain the benefits of the tool for a real domainer – this is keyword research domaining on steroids to be perfectly honest. On the fly potential of a keyword rich domain saves me the extra step of jumping to my registrar to see if its available.
As you can see with the demo below, I managed to find a pretty interesting domain based on my parent query “Disney”.
Disney KW Research
"Disney Characters" = WIN
My Poor Wallet
The two tools have a few known issues, but both Quality Nonsense (Domain Lookup) and Oliver (Domains By Volume) are nice guys who I have spoken to, and have further plans to develop the tools with additional features. For example, Domains by volume will soon support more registrars and other popular TLDs. I think Oliver is also working on a fix for running searches for “Exact Match” which seems to be a bit buggy at the moment.
Between the two scripts, it’s pretty easy to identify domains that are available while you are web browsing or researching keywords. I think by already deflated wallet is going to painfully decline further while accelerating my ever growing inventory of domains…
If you are interested in Domaining news, ideas and potentials, I think Domaining MindMap is a pretty useful site.
You ought to checkout Awesome SEO Tools for other useful SEO/Affiliate Tool reviews.
Rishi Lakhani is an independent Online Marketing Consultant specialising in SEO, PPC, Affiliate Marketing and Social Media. Explicitly.Me is his Blog. Google Profile
{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Brilliant Rishi. Great summary and the other day when you shared these tools with me and installed them right away. They’re awesome; made for a great post!
Wow. This is a simply fantastic collection of plugins. I’m one step closer to retiring and earning $$$ as a domainer ;p – thanks rishi!
I have used both them tools – although probably not enough!
I used to own about 30+ Disney domains – I got a nice letter in the post one day. I do not own them anymore
@Carl Hendy – What a bunch of prudes.
Thanks for the kind words about Domain Lookup. Love to hear any feedback on what you’d like to see in future versions.
Thanks for the tips, I love playing around in Google KW tool to find good domains, still many good ones available for affiliates and SEOs
This “secret” is too juicy to share 
Exact match domains = printing money.
Very nice tools.
Love your blog! I just have one small request… can you publish whole posts via RSS? It’s very annoying to do additional clicking in google reader every time something interesting shows up
Done
All I can say is Cool Beans! This is great stuff and I will be sure to install most of these on my Firefox browser, first time i’ve been to your site and it is rad.
Cheers