Online Observations

There are a lot of people who like to buy domains - either because they think that collecting some good ones may reap rewards in the future, or they are looking for a good name for the new blog or site they are going to launch. Well, if you, for any reason, are looking to buy a domain name and don’t know where to start, your job just got a whole lot easier. Here are some very nice services which help in domain name search, availability, and registration.

Instant Domain Search - The first one is a simple to use site which basically shows availability of .com, .net, or .org domains as you type your desired domain name. It also presents handy links to services which let you check who the owner of a domain name you want is and whether it is up for sale or not. If your desired domain name is available, then it points you to various domain registrars with the registration pricing listed.

Dominize - a similar service to the one above, except it looks better, is faster and you can use it from your mobile phone as well. It lacks a few features of the one above, but it adds one more feature: as you type, it also pulls up the availability of sub-words - for example, when I typed onlineobservations there, it also showed me availability of onlineobservation and onlineobs.

AjaxWhoIs - this is a service which is also super fast. It also supports more than just .com, .net, and .org domains unlike the two above. There is also a FireFox extension available which lets you use the service from within FireFox without visiting the site.

Bust A Name - this service has by far the most features. Aside from doing the regular domain search as offered by the services above, you can do a word search. You can keep adding words related to your domain, and it will search for domains which are a combination of these words by combining them. For each word entered, it will display to you a list of similar words as well. You can also see if an already registered domain is for sale. (It has a lot of options, which you should checkout by visiting the site).

Domain Hacks - And finally, this service offers what none of the others do. Have you ever wanted to get a domain name like del.icio.us. Well, this service will find such domains for you.

I am sure there are many more tools which allow you to search for domain names out there and so if you know any that are as good or better, please leave them in comments.