Show HN: Aha Domain Search

14 comments

·August 4, 2025

Hey everyone!

Years ago, one of my favorite domain search tools, Lean Domain Search [1], was acquired by Automattic. Unfortunately, that's when the "enshitification" began, particularly when they started forcing the `.blog` TLD in search results.

After discovering the simplicity of RDAP lookups, which can be done by fetching a JSON response directly from the client (e.g., `https://rdap.verisign.com/com/v1/domain/ycombinator.com`), I decided it was finally time to build my own solution.

Here's how it works:

The first tab appends prefixes and suffixes to your chosen word and queries the Verisign API directly from your browser. No data is sent to my server.

The AI tab attempts more intelligent prefixing with the optional context.

The "Quirky" tab generates variations of the affix search through trivial merging (for instance, for the word "brain," "brain" + "node" becomes "brainode," and "hub" + "brain" becomes "hubrain").

The "Portmanteau" tab was inspired by this HN submission [2] and my personal desire [3] to see it function as a domain name generator. I'm using AI, though, as it was easier and faster to implement and get this up and running ASAP.

I'm all ears for suggestions and feedback!

[1]: https://leandomainsearch.com/ [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19241236 [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19245396

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Daviey

I didn't know RDAP lookups was a thing, but now i've learned something by looking at your source. Thanks OP

https://www.verisign.com/en_US/domain-names/registration-dat...

slig

You're welcome! I did not know either until very recently, that's why I decided to give this side project a try.

whyage

Great idea overall. The results in the AI tab are not very creative though, just variations of the same creative idea.

slig

Thanks for trying! The AI tab is my least favorite as well, will try improving the prompt and changing to a better model.

hn-user-42

I have 1 suggestion, as domain order is not important, can you move available domains to the top as soon as you found them available.

thanks

conductr

I thought the same but noticed it doesn’t even check all the domains unless you scroll down the list and it lazy loads each on as they appear in the viewport.

OP. Sorry to be harsh but this is awful UX in terms of reviewing search results. Every thing I search said 0 available so I searched again and again. Then I scrolled down and noticed they were being checked as I scrolled and the number of available domains matching actually become >0. Not how i want to see the results.

FWIW, I’ve had similar complaints about LDS and a few lines if javascript will clean up their search result page (exclude .blog and unavailable). Not able to share rn but look at their dom and im sure you could have done this too.

slig

>OP. Sorry to be harsh but this is awful UX in terms of reviewing search results

No problem, it can be improved by using the Verisign .com domain list that is updated daily. I just wanted to try something that I could ship in a couple of days after learning about RDAP and that it allowed client side requests.

If there's interested in the service, I'll improve it.

joelanman

ai tab Generate button is disabled for me, regardless of input

slig

What browser are you using, please?

hyrumjb3

Love it--feel like it helps builders fight back against domain squatters.

This is useful especially with the weird .blog insertion on LeanDomainSearch. But I've always wondered how LeanDomainSearch gets results so quickly? The results are almost instant for thousands of domains.

woadwarrior01

There's an old blog post[1] by the founder of LeanDomainSearch on this.

[1]: https://mattmazur.com/2018/05/18/extracting-a-list-of-all-re...

slig

>But I've always wondered how LeanDomainSearch gets results so quickly?

You can sign up with Verisign and they let you download a text file with all the registered .com domains, updated daily.

ethan_smith

They likely use a batch API or maintain a local cache of recently checked domains, combined with prefix/suffix filtering against a pre-computed availability database rather than doing individual RDAP/WHOIS lookups for every possible combination.