I found a tool that I’ve been using to harvest unregistered domain names and I wanted to share this with you. Vurr is a tool that is similar to what Overture was, but it relies on a static set of data. From the Vurr website:
“This is a free alternative to Overture and equivalent tools. Search data is from 48.6 million searches by 657,426 distinct users and comprises 97 million keywords. Data was collected by AOL on a random sample of US users from March 1, 2006 through May 31, 2006. In the interest of privacy, search information is only available in aggregate and numeric queries dropped.”
Because the data isn’t exactly “new” it isn’t the best tool to search for trends or more currently used keywords. For example, the keyword search for “twitter” returned no results. However, I do think it’s good for long tail domain searches, especially with people dropping more names than usual due to the economy.
To find domain names, I enter specific search terms, such as “mortgage,” “refinancing,” “soccer,” “mobile” etc. I then take the results, along with the actual # of searches, and I use an Excel sheet to remove the numbers, leaving me with rows of keyword phrases. I then use the Godaddy bulk domain search tool to find the .com names that are available to register.
Once I get the results, I break up the domain name back into it’s search terms, and I search Google for the “quoted phrase” to see how many results there are, how many advertisers there are, and I get a feeling for the competitiveness of the keyword and value of the product or service.
If I think a particular domain name would have commercial value to an end user and is a term that people are looking to find, I will generally buy it. The key thing is that the phrase, as listed, is a searched term and has meaning. Even if the phrase is in a niche industry or field, if it could have commercial value, I am willing to take a chance.
Thanks Elliot for this – I shall certainly try it out with many of my keyword rich domains.
Side note – Did you get any .us domains?
Hi Elliot,
Thanks for the great tip!
I’ve had a local copy of that AOL database for a while and use some simple commandline tools to extract phrases. Vurr has indexed it, which makes it *a lot* faster…
Not good for trend-spotting, but definitely for finding keywords with solid search frequencies.
Thanks Elliot:
Will take a look a this tool…will do some experiments with other languages as well; spanish, portuguese and french mainly.
Thanks, this is pretty helpful, good for brainstorming if nothing else. I still miss Overture’s suggestion tool.
Thanks Elliot. I think this tool will be extremely helpful for individuals looking for good names. I also recommend squadhelp.com for finding great domain names. This site uses the “wisdom of crowds” allowing users across the world to submit domain name suggestions. The best suggestion wins a prize that is setup in advance by the contest holder, creating a win win situation for every one.
Rachel
we have an upto date tool. Google ! . So why we just vurrrrrrrr ….. !