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Domainface is a kick-ass domaining tool that helps you search and audit domain names at auction from the top auction sites — Godaddy, Snap, Namejet, Sedo, Flippa and Pool.

Enough of the Intro… Show Me The Money

Best way to explain what Domainface is to show you a couple of screens. At its most basic Domainface is a search engine that finds recently dropped or currently at auction domains. Simply enter your keyword/s and hit search:

Running a search lands you on the result page which displays some really neat metrics to help you audit available options:

Here’s where the first bit of magic appears. The most important columns (for me anyway) are:

• Sales Category – this column will tell you where the domain sits in the registration cycle. You can also use filters which I’ll show shortly.
• Available Until – how long you have to try to acquire domain before it drops.
• Age – general rule-of-thumb “the older the better”.
• Reg. – use in conjunction with Age.
• Archived – this is very handy if you want to see the domain history in Archive.org. You can avoid some heartache with a couple of clicks.
• PR (PR icon) – no matter how much you hate to love it, PageRank is still a widely used metric, but you should always make sure backlinks haven’t been deleted. The other handy feature of Domainface is that they check for faked PR and notify you if PR was passed through a redirect.
• Alexa (Alexa icon) – can be useful to see if a site gets a lot of traffic, but obviously caveat-emptor on this easily gamed metric.
• Google indexed (Google icon) – you want to check this manually anyway, but still handy to see what’s been booted from Google’s index.
• Google backlinks (Google Icon) – when you’re familiar with what Google displays to the link: operator this metric can become useful.
• Yahoo (Yahoo! icon) – Sadly soon to die a death, but Site Explorer is a great backlinks tool.
• Majestic SEO – from a pure SEO perspective the number of unique linking domains is a really important factor to consider. It’s worth noting that this is the “Historic” index domain count, and some of these links may no longer be live.

How To Use The Data

I’ll admit that I do use PageRank as an initial indicator to stack-rank domains. My next metric is almost always backlinks, and I check the Google and MajesticSEO link counts to get an idea which domains warrant further research. You can quickly check the data behind each metric by clicking on any value, and being logged into your MajesticSEO account will help you pull more valuable data with a single click (I’m very fond of their Site Explorer tool for quick reccies).

Advanced Features

The basic search and results pages probably wont knock you off your feet, but I think you’ll like the advanced search features of Domainface:

The advanced features allow you to slice-and-dice through results and very quickly find domains that fit your parameters. Some of most useful filters are:

• Domain Name Filters – I like to use “Must contain ANY of” to run and save related keyword searches, but you’ve got virtually every type of text modifier at your disposal. Dictionary and language search is in development currently.
• Directories, Indexes and Backlinks – the two controls I generally use are PageRank and “PageRank must be validated”. With PageRank you can quickly search for high PR domains by simply setting this at your minimum PR and leaving all other filters empty. You can also set sources to further filter high PR domains by auction house etc. The PageRank validation is a handy filter that allows you to show only domains whose PageRank didn’t pass through a redirect. Again, handy to avoid valueless domains.
• Sources & Categories – these controls let you filter by auction house and sale type. There’s a lot of power in both these filters, and you should make use to track down real gems others may never find. I’ll cover each below.
• Sale Type (“Only list domains that are:”) – here you can select what types of sales you want to view in your results. If I’m interested in domains for SEO I generally filter out “No longer registered”. There’s debate over whether Google resets dropped domains, and while I have a feeling not all are dropped domains are reset, I think it’s probably dependent on content amongst other things. You can also filter out “Privately for sale” if you’re only looking for non-renewed domains.
• Auction House (“Only list domains available from:”) – this control allows you to filter by auction house, and where you shop will determine what type of auction you’ll walk into. GoDaddy is probably the best place to start out as you can pick up non-renewed domains for dollars. Snapnames, Namejet and Pool also sell non-renewed inventory but their baseline prices are all higher. Sedo and Flippa (great site to pick up fully developed and money-making sites) both carry inventory for sale rather than non-renewed inventory.
• TLD )”Only list domains ending with:”) – everyone has their own opinions, likes and dislikes. I prefer to go looking for .com, but you can easily filter by your own wants or needs.

When you put these features together you have a very powerful tool at your disposal. My focus is primarily on domain SEO metrics, and you can see that Domainface is built with many SEO metrics in mind. It gets better though…

Saved Searches and Alerts

You can save your searches, so once you’ve set up a search query that pans the gold from the dirt you can save that search for later visits. You can also set up alerts so Domainface will send you a nice list of new domains it finds that match your search. This is a super tool for keeping an eye on things without having to dive in.

Auto Bidding

Here’s where you get a serious uplift. Finding domains is the first battle, but securing them constitutes winning the war. How you bid and counter-bid will often determine your success, and one of the big mistakes people make is showing their hand too early. Basically if you bid on a domain you’re raising a flag to other domainers that you see value, so the best bidders will always wait until the last moments of the auction to avoid flagging others. Domainface offers an auto-bidding tool that will swoop in at the dying moments to place your bids. The bad news is I haven’t tried this out, so I cant really say how well it works. Here’s a screen from the Domainface site:

Try Before You Buy

Domainface offer a free 7-day trial, and it’s well worth a test-drive. It’s definitely the best domain research tool I’ve found, and probably a must-have application if you start getting serious about domain purchases.