What Tools Do You Use for Domain Name Research?
- Thread starter yalzaabi
- Start date
tamimkhan
Newbie
- Aug 31, 2025
- 27
- 7
For deeper domain research beyond free WHOIS, most people use SEO and backlink intelligence tools — popular ones include Ahrefs, SEMrush, Majestic, Moz, SimilarWeb, and SpyFu for backlinks/traffic history, plus Wayback Machine for past content and NameBio/GoDaddy/Afternic for valuation insights.
yalzaabi
BANNED
- Aug 11, 2025
- 15
- 6
That’s helpful, thanks. I’ve used Wayback Machine before but haven’t tried tools like Majestic or NameBio. Do you find one gives more reliable data for domain valuation?a
- Oct 28, 2020
- 11,663
- 14,626
I don't know what you'd expect to see from a "valuation" tool but if you mean value assessment or something then no tool / site is accurate, so I wouldn't bother with them as assessing the value of a domain takes into account a lot of stuff, including human values which - as we all know - is almost always biased since humans have their own opinions, emotions, and values that they operate with. Which is why sometimes you see a seemingly useless domain that tells you nothing being sold for $5000 to a random someone who sees that as the perfect domain that they've always dreamt about owning for whatever intrinsic reasons. And value assessment websites like Estibot, GoDaddy, etc will never be able to include the human bias in their evaluations. Moreover, even these supposedly quality evaluation sites many times are way off in their evaluation, not only once have I checked several evaluation sites and saw completely different evaluations of the same domain. I'm talking about domains that were priced at $118 on Estibot but at $3200 on Godaddy, and stuff like that which made no sense...
So yeah, if you're talking about sites that assess the value of a domain I would not bother with those sites not even as a general idea as they're off the mark even in that sense.
For checking the topicality of a website I think MajesticSEO is still the go-to site as they have a lot of data on backlinks (I think more data than Ahrefs, but I'm not sure, but they do have a ton of it), and - more importantly - they have that Trust Flow thing which I've never understood how they calculate (or maybe I did understand at some point, but I forgot
)
But anyway, I remember using Majestic for a few weeks straight many years ago, and was able to find quite a few interesting (and topically relevant) domains with it just by checking the TF and CF metrics. I don't remember the exact ratios, but I think the best domains (in terms of topical relevancy) always fell within the 0.5 to 1.5 TF to CF ratio. Or was it CF to TF ratio? I don't remember, but something like that...
For checking backlinks-related stuff (RDs, backlinks, anchors, etc) I think Ahrefs is the go-to tool (although they've become expensive as fuck lately, so probably they're not an option anymore for lots of people, but they still have a good amount of data on backlinks, so they're my go-to recommendation if you can afford them)
For checking the traffic I think all of these big sites are equally good, or equally bad since all of them estimate the traffic. So, in this regard, I think it's best to trust neither, but check all of them and form a general opinion on the traffic levels based on the average.
For PPC-related checks SpyFu used to be #1 at some point, but I've not used it in over a decade, so I don't know what's happened to it (or whether it still exists) since then. But if it still exists I can only assume that they've gone better over time, so check them out if you're interested in competitor analysis for your Google Ads, they used to offer a lot of good insight into that.
Last but not least, if you're looking for expired domain finders on the cheap (or even for free) Scrapebox has a premium plugin that's very good at finding (not so powerful, but still good) expired domains, but you'd have to buy Scrapebox first, and also rent quality proxies, which might make SB not so cheap in the end, but still, for the 100s of uses that SB has it's still the greatest investment you could make in a SEO tool. I would not trade my SB for a Ahrefs account if you've poured me with wax, that much I like this tool
And on the free side, expireddomains.net is a decent site for finding (also not very powerful but still good) expired domains. You just need to spend some time with it to go through the lists that are being updated constantly because there are literally 1000s of new domain that ED picks I think hourly, so there's a ton of them that you need to check. But the last time I've used ED I managed to find 6 decent domain within 4-5 hours, so it can pay off if you have the time and patience to sift through the 1000s of domains that are coming in periodically. With Scrapebox I managed to find a few good expired domains in just 20 minutes, but SB is paid tool while ED is free, so there's that trade-off....
Anyway, these were the tools I used to for my domain name research some 4-5 years ago when I was active in this industry, and unless they've all gone bankrupt or something I think they're still the go-to option for these tasks, so I recommend them.
I should have probably mentioned Semrush too in here somewhere as they're pretty good from what I understand, but I never used them so I chose not to talk about them, but I do encourage you to give them a try, they seem to be the next best thing for those who can't afford Ahrefs high costs, so try them out if you can.
And I think some people in the forum are selling premium Semrush accounts for cheap (like $20-30 cheap which is great deal when you consider that a premium Semrush account costs $199 / month... or was it $299 / month?? I don't remember), so yeah you probably can't go wrong with Semrush if you manage to find such a deal...
Have a look in here and see if anyone still sells them as they used to be pretty popular a while ago...
https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/account-selling-renting-services.310/
So yeah, if you're talking about sites that assess the value of a domain I would not bother with those sites not even as a general idea as they're off the mark even in that sense.
For checking the topicality of a website I think MajesticSEO is still the go-to site as they have a lot of data on backlinks (I think more data than Ahrefs, but I'm not sure, but they do have a ton of it), and - more importantly - they have that Trust Flow thing which I've never understood how they calculate (or maybe I did understand at some point, but I forgot
)But anyway, I remember using Majestic for a few weeks straight many years ago, and was able to find quite a few interesting (and topically relevant) domains with it just by checking the TF and CF metrics. I don't remember the exact ratios, but I think the best domains (in terms of topical relevancy) always fell within the 0.5 to 1.5 TF to CF ratio. Or was it CF to TF ratio? I don't remember, but something like that...
For checking backlinks-related stuff (RDs, backlinks, anchors, etc) I think Ahrefs is the go-to tool (although they've become expensive as fuck lately, so probably they're not an option anymore for lots of people, but they still have a good amount of data on backlinks, so they're my go-to recommendation if you can afford them)
For checking the traffic I think all of these big sites are equally good, or equally bad since all of them estimate the traffic. So, in this regard, I think it's best to trust neither, but check all of them and form a general opinion on the traffic levels based on the average.
For PPC-related checks SpyFu used to be #1 at some point, but I've not used it in over a decade, so I don't know what's happened to it (or whether it still exists) since then. But if it still exists I can only assume that they've gone better over time, so check them out if you're interested in competitor analysis for your Google Ads, they used to offer a lot of good insight into that.
Last but not least, if you're looking for expired domain finders on the cheap (or even for free) Scrapebox has a premium plugin that's very good at finding (not so powerful, but still good) expired domains, but you'd have to buy Scrapebox first, and also rent quality proxies, which might make SB not so cheap in the end, but still, for the 100s of uses that SB has it's still the greatest investment you could make in a SEO tool. I would not trade my SB for a Ahrefs account if you've poured me with wax, that much I like this tool
And on the free side, expireddomains.net is a decent site for finding (also not very powerful but still good) expired domains. You just need to spend some time with it to go through the lists that are being updated constantly because there are literally 1000s of new domain that ED picks I think hourly, so there's a ton of them that you need to check. But the last time I've used ED I managed to find 6 decent domain within 4-5 hours, so it can pay off if you have the time and patience to sift through the 1000s of domains that are coming in periodically. With Scrapebox I managed to find a few good expired domains in just 20 minutes, but SB is paid tool while ED is free, so there's that trade-off....
Anyway, these were the tools I used to for my domain name research some 4-5 years ago when I was active in this industry, and unless they've all gone bankrupt or something I think they're still the go-to option for these tasks, so I recommend them.
I should have probably mentioned Semrush too in here somewhere as they're pretty good from what I understand, but I never used them so I chose not to talk about them, but I do encourage you to give them a try, they seem to be the next best thing for those who can't afford Ahrefs high costs, so try them out if you can.
And I think some people in the forum are selling premium Semrush accounts for cheap (like $20-30 cheap which is great deal when you consider that a premium Semrush account costs $199 / month... or was it $299 / month?? I don't remember), so yeah you probably can't go wrong with Semrush if you manage to find such a deal...
Have a look in here and see if anyone still sells them as they used to be pretty popular a while ago...
https://www.blackhatworld.com/forums/account-selling-renting-services.310/
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