I've seen a few of these domain name generators / suggestion tools, and always wonder how they verify that the domain names are available? I've yet to find an API that lets me query them, and merely checking if there's a server registered for the domain name isn't sufficient, as it isn't required to have one.

I guess what I'm really asking is, how do you verify that they aren't taken already?

Fastest way is to check whether it exists in the nightly zone file, and then a DNS lookup, and whois query.

What is the nightly zone file?

It is zone file from the last night (or day). It requires free account from Verisign for .COM and .NET. I used such account for a while.

edit: "Zone file" is the file containing the records of all registered domains in a zone (.com or .net). Last time I checked it was something 80M records for .com

Check the DNS first, that eliminates most of them. If there's no DNS record, you have to do a whois check.

Works great! You should add a couple of extra registrar options (I use GoDaddy) so you can get the affiliate commission.

I guess that you didn't eat your own dog food ;-)

Have you been logging how many went on to be purchased?

It took me about 2 years to get 10k purchased on my domain generator.

It would be interesting to see how this one does.

That is pretty useful.

Can you not create affiliate accounts with other registrars? I hate to have registrar fragmentation. So, when your tool suggested dashbiz.com, I bought it through godaddy.

I used it yesterday and ended up registering a madmeta.com. Thanks!

If you included an affiliate link to godaddy I would have clicked it. They use cj.com for their aff program and auto-approve.

Great tool! This one and wordroid are my favorites to use

This is nice. You could increase user engagement by changing the select menus to radio buttons (reducing clicks by 50%).

I got the same domain-names in the same search-result. A bug you probably could fix pretty easy. Neat tool, thanks.