swola
Web and SaaS
domain name search
SHOW HN2012
111points
35comments
#187of 1,677 in 2012
Top 12%of 2012 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
5 positive, 8 neutral or asking, 1 mixed, 8 critical, out of 22 comments about the project. Thread score -0.09.
Execution: 1 for, 4 againstIdea: 4 for, 0 againstPerformance: 0 for, 2 againstDesign: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Useful and fun mashup of expiring domains and pronounceability
From 3 comments
This is so pro. I don't mind that the algorithm's a little wonky, or the availability isn't quite right, it's just a sweet little mashup.
geelen on HNVery cool and useful. Could be very useful once you add keyword search and more filtering. Good job. I have a somewhat off-topic question. How do you get access to these domain…
wrath on HNNice work - It's very effective: I went to buy like, 3 of the domains. Then realised I had no need for them and put my credit card away!
mrspeaker on HN
Objections
Pronounceability scoring is naive and inconsistent
From 2 comments
OK, that's a good start, but I hope you're devoting a fair amount of effort to improving your decision algorithm. At the moment, it considers tretz.com to be 60% pronounceable,…
etfb on HNI'm fairly sure qenis's high ranking is the result of using Levenshtein distance on dictionary words. You want phonetics based analysis instead. Then again qenis isn't that hard…
verroq on HN
Availability checks are unreliable; dropped domains often show as available when they are not
From 3 comments
I quite like the idea. However, of the about 10 domains I checked (5 letter ones), only one was available. You probably should use a different, more reliable, way of checking for…
PanMan on HNYou can force it to show 4-letter domains http://www.swola.com/index.php?limit=4 but none are actually available, they just don't have DNS records. http://instantdomainsearch.com…
mikeknoop on HNbabymail.com : you site says expired on 10/14/12 . However, http://who.godaddy.com/whois.aspx?domain=babymail.com&prog_id=GoDaddy
pppggg on HN
Mobile rendering is poor
From 1 comment
Site renders like ass on my phone, galaxy nexus, both in terms of speed and appearance.
hayksaakian on HN
Requests
Add keyword search and more filtering
From 2 comments
Very cool and useful. Could be very useful once you add keyword search and more filtering. Good job. I have a somewhat off-topic question. How do you get access to these domain…
wrath on HNGreat idea ! However, I have a problem : let's say I want all the domains starting with the letter "C" with 10 characters max. It says me "Limit of 1500 results reached. Narrow…
thomasgd on HN
Add pagerank and backlink data
From 1 comment
Great site, excellent idea. If you want to make this useful to slightly larger audience you could add pagerank and backlink information for the domains. Pagerank is simple enough…
RileyJames on HN
Improve the scoring algorithm, e.g. with dictionary or phonetic analysis
From 4 comments
OK, that's a good start, but I hope you're devoting a fair amount of effort to improving your decision algorithm. At the moment, it considers tretz.com to be 60% pronounceable,…
etfb on HNDoing a naive dictionary lookup would also help your algorithm, i.e. limoship.com should rank higher than leonadare.com in my opinion. Cool website though! I've always wondered…
mrmaddog on HNI'm fairly sure qenis's high ranking is the result of using Levenshtein distance on dictionary words. You want phonetics based analysis instead. Then again qenis isn't that hard…
verroq on HNMore useful than pronouncibility would be spellability. I'd score domains with only a single spelling as higher e.g. twang.com over base.com (bass.com). To do this the algorithm…
ollysb on HN
Questions
Where does the list of recently dropped domains come from?
From 3 comments
Great idea, how do you find recently dropped domains?
thomaslutz on HNWould love to know this too -- and am curious how the players in the market end up snatching these sites.
binarysolo on HNVery cool and useful. Could be very useful once you add keyword search and more filtering. Good job. I have a somewhat off-topic question. How do you get access to these domain…
wrath on HN
Alternatives named
DropParser
From 1 comment
To everyone looking for expiring/dropping domain lists, ive been building an app called dropparser that uses a free source (though I dont see it being mentioned in here yet).…
thinkdevcode on HN
FreshDrop and PremiumDrops
From 1 comment
Couple of sources. http://www.freshdrop.net/ & http://www.premiumdrops.com/ both require subscription, but the data is pretty good.
RileyJames on HN
Pool.com expiring list
From 1 comment
I think the more important question is, how do you find domains that are about to expire? I don't know what the domain hoarders do but here is what I do. I discovered that…
HNaTTY on HN
GoDaddy auctions FTP
From 1 comment
godaddy has some on their ftp: ftp://ftp.godaddy.com/ It includes member auctions etc. I'd guess other services have similar?
sejje on HN
Instant Domain Search
From 1 comment
You can force it to show 4-letter domains http://www.swola.com/index.php?limit=4 but none are actually available, they just don't have DNS records. http://instantdomainsearch.com…
mikeknoop on HN