Domainr - blog

Domainr for iPhone

Domainr for iPhone is now available in the App Store!

Huge props to our good friend Sahil Desai, who built the app in his spare time because he wanted an easy way to search for domains from his iPhone. In fact, he reached out to us back in 2009 about building the app, which prompted Randy to build out Domainr's API for this exact sort of use. Thank you, @Sahil!

We've also made the app's source available on github, in case anybody wants to hack on it. Let us know what you're finding with it in our forum.

IDN ccTLD support

Via @domainr: "Domainr supports all three new TLDs: http://domai.nr/about/tlds#idn"

Props to @rr for pushing out the update!

Domainr for Android

Hey Android users,

Our compatriots at Exygy have whipped up a neat little app* that uses Domainr's API for doing domain search. Check it out! (or use barcode scanner to snap this QR code)

 

* the app is called, "Exygy Domains" in the Android Marketplace.

Short Domain Search

Domainr's search results now show vowel-stripped "shortened domains," which have become quite popular recently thanks to services like Bitly and Awe.sm.

Domainr does its best to show whether or not it's possible to register a domain, but many NICs and Registrars have their own rules for things like minimum # of characters in a domain, etc. If you encounter an error in Domainr's search results, please let us know in the forum and we'll get it fixed asap.

Enjoy!

Affiliate Programs Need Unit Tests

Kelly over at Hunch has done some investigative digging into one of their affiliate relationships that was mysteriously not converting. Domainr and Hunch share an affiliate-based business model, where both are search sites trying to help people find what they're looking for:

"We signed up to the Best Buy affiliate program through Commission Junction, and tested Best Buy links in several topics for which we already had a history of strong post-click conversions. While CJ’s reporting platform showed nearly the same ad impressions and affiliate clicks for BestBuy as we tracked internally, CJ reported not just a lower post-click conversion rate than we had historically seen, but actually zero. Several more days went by, clicks were still flowing to Best Buy, but they reported zero resulting sales."

"We decided to test this by buying some merchandise ourselves. Two of our employees, on two different days, followed Hunch affiliate links to Best Buy and then bought something. CJ still showed no sales activity. Houston, we have a problem."

Long story short, Kelly uncovered a huge snafu with Best Buy's affiliate service, and Hunch promptly discontinued their relationship with them. While we've yet to do this digging through Domainr's logs, we're curious what we'd uncover. And more broadly, Kelly highlights the inherent need for trust in the system:

"Bottom line: for cpa-driven affiliate relationships to work, there has to be trust and reliability in the system for accurate post-click reporting and payments. So it’s disheartening when even a big brand like Best Buy can have such a complete failure in their affiliate model, as we experienced above."

"One implication of all this: I would gladly pay a 3rd party to conduct “real transaction” audits on the sites with whom I have an affiliate relationship. I’m not talking about click matching, but actually buying a low-priced physical good from time to time (and perhaps then returning it later for a refund). This approach couldn’t be efficiently scaled to take representative frequent samples for a given affiliate, but still, at low volume it could potentially identify the most egregious offenders. Because as we found out with Best Buy, where there was smoke, there was fire."

We agree wholeheartedly. Thanks for posting about your research, Kelly!

Welcome, Smashing Visitors!

The folks at Smashing Mag very kindly mention Domainr in their post about finding, registering and managing domains:

The popular Domainr service comes as easy and clean as it gets. They call themselves a “domain name search engine” and solely focus on the domain search experience. Searching for a domain name is very intuitive and fast indeed. If you found a name you can choose from a list of registrars where you can register the respective domain.

Apart from the standard .COM, .NET & .ORG domains, Domainr’s strength is surely the ability to find domain hacks with exotic country code top-level domain extensions e.g. burri.to (.TO - Tonga), lifestrea.ms (.MS - Montserrat) or cli.gs (South Georgia & the South Sandwich Islands).

Domainr makes the domain search process fun and is probably the easiest tool to find creative domain names in 2009.

We're deeply honored—thanks for the kind words!

Registering a .nr domain

Occasionally we hear questions from folks about Domainr's .nr domain, inquiring about the .nr registrar's scary registration process. It's definitely one of the sketchiest-looking webapps we've ever come across, but the process worked for us, and Cameron's described it over on Get Satisfaction. Here's a summary:

1. go through the process on Cenpac's web site
2. wire them the $
3. email them that you've wired the $
4. you should hear back from them (we did) in < 24 hours

Domainr and Design

We recently heard from a Domainr user via email, inquiring about a design technique used to create Domainr's look and feel. If you're curious about that sort of thing, take a look at Randy's writeup:

ydnar.com: CSS Images, Sprites, and iPhone Webkit

Web Worker Daily on domains

WWD has some great advice for folks searching for domains for their projects, and we concur:

"I think that you can take the “get a dot-com at all costs” mentality too far, so you may want to consider alternatives to .com."

Keep Registries and Registrars Separate

CircleID:

"Since 1999, when Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) and ICANN agreed on the separation of NSI's combined registry and registrar functions, the market as grown from about 5 million to over 100 million domain names in the generic TLDs. The registrar companies grew from a solitary one to over 900 (500 active) strong, and retail prices of registrations plummeted from $35.00 per year to an average between $10.00 and $12.00 per year."

Seems like a no brainer to me, then George Kirikos drops more wisdom in the comments:

"The solution is to reframe the issue from the point of view of maximizing consumer benefits through tenders, and ignoring both the registrars and the registries. Indeed, reframed in this manner, the strongest case can be made that there should be no new gTLDs, at least until such time as a proper economic study determines that they would add value for consumers that exceed the negative externalities."

Agreed.