The Instant Domain Search team writes about engineering fast domain lookup, using Rust, streaming JSON, embeddings, and CDN setups.
HN commenters recommend the service for finding domain names, noting it uses DNS queries and so may misreport some taken domains as available.
I'm looking at the behavior of the search tool on the page, which makes a request to https://instantdomainsearch.com/services/all/<query parameters> through AJAX and gets streamed lines of JSON back as a result. It's not doing DNS queries from JS or whatever.
Looking at the behavior with curl and wireshark, what I see is that a full, new connection to the service does spend most of its time in DNS lookup and HTTPS handshake. It takes about 0.1~0.3s for the actual data to transfer.
What the article is recommending is basically, don't make a request per JSON object. (It streamed back 69 objects for the query I tried.) Using one connection to transfer the information saves a lot of overhead -- and I don't have a problem with that part of the advice.
What I mean is, instead of using JS at all to do this (and consequently triggering a 5 second initial page load, etc etc.), have the server build the page the traditional way, and send that -- that's still one connection for that data transfer, and with a light page design and keep alive connection, the page load time does not seem like it would be significantly different here (most of the time is going to be in that 0.1~0.3s for the query to execute regardless) -- but the initial page load time would be significantly faster on slow connections.
If your queries do actually take many seconds, sure, maybe there would be a benefit there, but I'm not seeing the value on a page like this, and I really don't want people to take away…
I just tried the site. In Firefox I searched for "led lighting" and this is the page I saw:
https://il.godaddy.com/en/domainsearch/find?checkAvail=1&tmskey=dpp_dbs&domainToCheck=ledlighting.com&isc=cjcbh99&cjelbDays=45&AID=11751890&SID=dfdbd864-3c2e-474a-afff-b94461f32136&utm_source=cj&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=xx-xx_corp_affiliate_11751890_001&utm_content=Instant+Domains%2c+Inc._4213004&tgt=8818689&cjdata=MXxOfDB8WXww
However, I did notice the flash of something else loading and a redirect, so I hit the browser's back button and this is where it took me:
https://instantdomainsearch.com/?q=led+lighting
Something on that page is causing an immediate redirect to Godaddy.
I just tested on Google Chrome and had slightly different results. Instead of a redirect, the Godaddy page opened in a new tab (which was focused) yet the instantdomainsearch.com page remained in another tab.
It's a fairly guard-railed, easy to deploy, React-based static site generator with dynamic content capabilities as well. It's generally great software. My team uses it for https://instantdomainsearch.com and we get good performance and developer experience overall.
To me it feels like the React "happy path" at the moment if you need a static or partially dynamic site/web application. I suppose the ideal use case is essentially any site you want to serve statically but maintain with React. This could be a blog, graphic design portfolio, or even a small store. It makes it easy for us to embed our React-based search application inside of a site with static content beside it that's easy to maintain and create.
Yeah, we could do this without next, but it provides some convention and well-made tools that generally make the job easier.
Instead of looking up domain names on Domain Tools I would recommend something like https://instantdomainsearch.com/. It's using DNS queries so sometimes a taken domain name without any DNS records will show as available but that's a small trade-off considering the speed gain. It also enables you to do some invaluable brainstorming which is impossible using a submit-and-wait lookup.
Another tool I'm using frequently is http://www.leandomainsearch.com/ (originally a Show HN) where you put in a word and it will look up thousands of popular pre and suffix combinations in a second. The same DNS constraints applies but it's easy to click the domain name to see if it's really available.
Newegg has one of the most powerful product search/filter mechanisms I've seen. It's not the best UX (could use more performance and a better multi-select mechanism, and dividing the interface into three levels of simple/advanced/power search doesn't seem ideal), but in terms of functionality, it almost always has the features I want pulled out and selectable. Search for a monitor, and you'll get options for resolution, inputs, size, etc.
In terms of raw performance, I'm impressed with the speed and presentation of https://instantdomainsearch.com/ . Instant live responsiveness improves usability significantly.
The way it shows the shorter / trimmed variants of what you type is interesting but not, I feel, particularly useful. It has a nice UI though and does seem very fast! It also only does com, net and org, whereas ajaxwhois, for example, does biz, us, info and ca.
Two alternatives:
http://www.ajaxwhois.com/
http://www.instantdomainsearch.com/
A "sort of" alternative (requires a click but comes up with better results for word mixes): http://www.bustaname.com/
I'd rather like to see one that can also do .co.uk, just being a Brit and all :) I have a few customers who would use such a thing.