It used to be quite cumbersome and slow to perform domain research, then the domain registers became a whole lot smarter by providing you with a list of alternative ‘suggested’ domains. While the suggestions that the domain registers were suggesting were at times useful, more often than not they were utterly useless and weren’t worth the money to purchase.

Some time ago I stumbled across Domains Bot, which is an AJAX enabled domain search utility. You enter the name of the domain that you’d like to use and it comes back with an AJAX dropdown list with information on whether the domain is available or if it is for sale on one of the big domain clearing houses.

Yesterday, I followed a link into Bust A Name, which is a similar service with a twist. This time around you enter in a bunch of key words or phrases that you’d like in the domain and it goes away and tries to find all of the domains within your suggested list that are available; drastically cutting down research time.

Next time you’re looking to buy a domain, give one of these utilities a go; I’ve found them very useful.