Some of you that follow this blog might remember that I recommended a great domain generator called Lean Domain Search in my article “4 Awesome Tools for Finding the Perfect Domain Name.” In the article I had mentioned that Lean Domain Search had a nice brandable domain name generator. Technically it wasn't a generator as Matt Mazur, the creator behind Lean Domain Search, would release one of the brandable domains name every hour. A lot of those names were very good and apparently a lot of people were registering these quality brandable domains. As far as I can tell Matt Mazur shut it down a within the past week or two as the page is returning a 404.
This was what Matt Mazur said about shuttering the brandable domain section of Lean Domain Search in email.
The service was fairly popular but it was very time consuming to keep adding new domain names to the list. I wound up removing it to focus on the keyword-based tool which is what most folks were using anyway 🙂
The brandable domain generator for Lean Domain Search was launched in March, 2013 meaning it was a short lived offering. I can understand that it would be difficult to release new names if people are registering the domains faster than you can can come up with new ones. At least that is what I assume was the issue.
On May 16th, 2013 Matt wrote a great blog post about how he finds brandable domain names and the algorithm behind it. I am glad that he wrote about it since it should help people if you searching for a good brandable domain and haven't been able to think of anything. (In case you don't know what a brandable domain name is it would be something along the lines of Yahoo, Google, Instagram, etc.)
Matt also seems to have shuttered another one of Lean Domain Search useful offerings, Domain Name Trends. This was a section that allowed you to research and analyze domain trends in the .COM space. Matt used Verisign's Zone file to analyze domain name trends and what sort of interesting domains were being registered overall for the week.
I haven't seen an explanation of why the domain trends section was shutdown as well. I assume it was time consuming and took a lot of work to make sure the reports were accurate and to download the .COM zone file everyday. I can really only speculate though.
As far as I can tell there are no plans to shutdown Lean Domain Search's domain name generator. In fact Matt did away with paid subscriptions so anyone can see a the full lists of available domains for keywords entered. (The site used to work off a freemium model.) This probably has brought more affiliate revenue from domain name registrars since people are more inclined to buy a domain name they really like on the spot if they see more good domains.
I will keep using Lean Domain Search as I think it is one of the best domain name generators out there, if not the best. It is easy-to-use, well laid out, fast and generates good domains you would actually want to use.