Find Expired Domains Using Google
Recently, I've been tinkering with the idea of online advertising. Not just advertising on SavageReactor, which I'm still undecided about, but also buying domains to park them with advertisers.
The problem with domain parking, is finding a domain that will get high traffic, but not be so rare, that it'll cost a fortune, either to buy from someone else, or to snatch it as it drops.
The solution? Using Google search, domaintools.com and monikor.com, you can enter a specific search, which will search domaintools.com for expired domain lists. Domaintools.com keeps an updated list of domains that are expiring, you can search them by date of expiry as well as keywords you want to look for. Using the results, you can build a list of domain names that may interest you, then pass the list to monikor.com to check the availability.
See each section below for more details on each of these steps.
1. The Search
The search you want to do on Google is as follows:
"auction date" 10-**-2008 intitle:"keyword" site:whois.domaintools.com
You can specify an exact date, it must be in the format MM/DD/YYYY, and optionally provide a keyword using intitle:"keyword".
1.1. Try it
This search form will take a keywords from you, and a date of expiry, and redirect you to Google.com to display the results.
2. What Now?
Now that you have your Google search results, click one of them. Scroll down the page looking for the section 'Domains for Auction', 'Domains for Sale' and 'Compare Similar Domains', see the image to the right.
Copy the domains from each section into your favourite text editor. Don't worry about including the dates/prices, we can remove these later.
Repeat the process on a few more pages of results, or use different searches for a wider range of domains. Once you are happy with your domain list, run it through the domain name extractor to remove the dates/prices and any other junk. Now you're ready to check the availability.
3. Check Availability
Head on over to Monikor.com (requires registration) and click 'Register Domains' at the top. Below the blue search box, you'll find a link for 'Multiple Domains?'. Click it and paste in your list of domain names.
You can search other extensions by changing the options on that page, when you're done, click 'Search' and you will be shown which of the domains in your list are available for purchase.
I tried this with the keyword 'liverpool' (no I'm not a Liverpool fan, my brother is), and found two available domains, one of which 'tourliverpool.com' looks pretty good for advertising.
Good domain hunting...
