[HN Gopher] Show HN: Aha Domain Search
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Show HN: Aha Domain Search
Hey everyone! Years ago, one of my favorite domain search tools,
Lean Domain Search [1], was acquired by Automattic. Unfortunately,
that's when the "enshitification" began, particularly when they
started forcing the `.blog` TLD in search results. After
discovering the simplicity of RDAP lookups, which can be done by
fetching a JSON response directly from the client (e.g.,
`https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/ycombinator.com`), I
decided it was finally time to build my own solution. Here's how
it works: The first tab appends prefixes and suffixes to your
chosen word and queries the Verisign API directly from your
browser. No data is sent to my server. The AI tab attempts more
intelligent prefixing with the optional context. The "Quirky" tab
generates variations of the affix search through trivial merging
(for instance, for the word "brain," "brain" + "node" becomes
"brainode," and "hub" + "brain" becomes "hubrain"). The
"Portmanteau" tab was inspired by this HN submission [2] and my
personal desire [3] to see it function as a domain name generator.
I'm using AI, though, as it was easier and faster to implement and
get this up and running ASAP. I'm all ears for suggestions and
feedback! [1]: https://leandomainsearch.com/ [2]:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241236 [3]:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19245396
Author : slig
Score : 29 points
Date : 2025-08-04 19:21 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.ahadomainsearch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.ahadomainsearch.com)
| hyrumjb3 wrote:
| Love it--feel like it helps builders fight back against domain
| squatters.
| hn-user-42 wrote:
| I have 1 suggestion, as domain order is not important, can you
| move available domains to the top as soon as you found them
| available.
|
| thanks
| conductr wrote:
| I thought the same but noticed it doesn't even check all the
| domains unless you scroll down the list and it lazy loads each
| on as they appear in the viewport.
|
| OP. Sorry to be harsh but this is awful UX in terms of
| reviewing search results. Every thing I search said 0 available
| so I searched again and again. Then I scrolled down and noticed
| they were being checked as I scrolled and the number of
| available domains matching actually become >0. Not how i want
| to see the results.
|
| FWIW, I've had similar complaints about LDS and a few lines if
| javascript will clean up their search result page (exclude
| .blog and unavailable). Not able to share rn but look at their
| dom and im sure you could have done this too.
| slig wrote:
| >OP. Sorry to be harsh but this is awful UX in terms of
| reviewing search results
|
| No problem, it can be improved by using the Verisign .com
| domain list that is updated daily. I just wanted to try
| something that I could ship in a couple of days after
| learning about RDAP and that it allowed client side requests.
|
| If there's interested in the service, I'll improve it.
| joelanman wrote:
| ai tab Generate button is disabled for me, regardless of input
| slig wrote:
| What browser are you using, please?
| 65 wrote:
| This is useful especially with the weird .blog insertion on
| LeanDomainSearch. But I've always wondered how LeanDomainSearch
| gets results so quickly? The results are almost instant for
| thousands of domains.
| ethan_smith wrote:
| They likely use a batch API or maintain a local cache of
| recently checked domains, combined with prefix/suffix filtering
| against a pre-computed availability database rather than doing
| individual RDAP/WHOIS lookups for every possible combination.
| slig wrote:
| >But I've always wondered how LeanDomainSearch gets results so
| quickly?
|
| You can sign up with Verisign and they let you download a text
| file with all the registered .com domains, updated daily.
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| There's an old blog post[1] by the founder of LeanDomainSearch
| on this.
|
| [1]: https://mattmazur.com/2018/05/18/extracting-a-list-of-all-
| re...
| whyage wrote:
| Great idea overall. The results in the AI tab are not very
| creative though, just variations of the same creative idea.
| slig wrote:
| Thanks for trying! The AI tab is my least favorite as well,
| will try improving the prompt and changing to a better model.
| Daviey wrote:
| I didn't know RDAP lookups was a thing, but now i've learned
| something by looking at your source. Thanks OP
|
| https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/registration-dat...
| slig wrote:
| You're welcome! I did not know either until very recently,
| that's why I decided to give this side project a try.
| NoahZuniga wrote:
| I found a bug: if you include a . in the domain your looking for
| (ie a.b), all domains will show as available, even though they
| aren't.
| slig wrote:
| Will fix, thank you!
| mickeyfrac wrote:
| Small suggestion, in the simple tab you could put the <term>.com
| of the term searched as the first result. Cool project.
| slig wrote:
| Thanks, Mickey, for trying and for the suggestion!
| Chris612 wrote:
| Love this, thanks for building it, way faster way to explore
| options than what I'm used to!
|
| Could be worth adding some kind of 'only show available domains'
| option
|
| (edit: realizing this may require a rework of how the underlying
| availability checking process works, but could be worthwhile)
| slig wrote:
| Thank you, Chris! I love exploring options using the
| suffixes/prefixes [1] lists from wikipedia and
| InstantDomainSearch, and this saves me a lot of time. Hope you
| got some value from it and found some interesting names!
|
| >Could be worth adding some kind of 'only show available
| domains' option
|
| Yes, that will require a rework, but I'm willing to do it if
| this gets any traction.
|
| [1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_prefixes
| ghxst wrote:
| I've tried creating similar solutions and feel LLMs still lack
| accurate control over (or understanding of) length, stress /
| accents, and phonetics for consistent name generation. For
| usernames for example I've yet to create a generator that uses
| LLMs that beats simple Markov chains. Maybe because results are
| subjective it makes rating / training a lot harder? I like the
| site and your approach though and great job on lookup speed! If
| anyone has any tricks or suggestions I'd love to hear them.
| slig wrote:
| Thank you! Maybe keep generating using the Markov Chains and
| use a LLM to evaluate the results?
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(page generated 2025-08-08 23:01 UTC)