There are a lot of domain name related tools that many of us in the domain industry use daily, but I often think that most people rely on the tools to much or have too much trust in the data being provided! Some tools that I have used in the past and some I use everyday are simply not accurate or providing accurate data. It is best to be aware of the data you are looking at may not always be correct and how much you can trust it. Double checking is wise, but you have to be aware of the fact and know not to always trust the data provided.
Lets use a tool that Estibot.com offers as one example. The tool is called "Domain Idea Tool"
You simply enter in a keyword like Money. Then select to see domain names starting with Money, Contain Money or end with Money. Select how many domains you wish to have displayed, leave the check marked box to show available domain names only and click Generate Domains.
The data provided with this tool is
- The Domain Name
- Keywords Parsed
- Status (available, taken)
- Google Phrase frequency
- Ads
- CPC
- OVT
- Wordtracker Count
Lots of great data, even using a free account! The problem, the data is not always accurate if you do your own research based on the data provided. I was using the tool to look for available domain names and I selected to ONLY show available domain names. So I picked a random domain in the list (MusicForMoney.com) which shows in the Estibot list as "Available".
Doing a manual check with Verisign, (the registry) for .com domain names… MusicForMoney.com is not only registered already, it has been since 2004! The domain name is in Redemption period, but not "available".
Even using the Estibot tool to check availability shows the domain name is registered, so why would a tool that provides "available" domains that can check if the domain is available or not, display domains the tool should already know is NOT technically available.
Some domains were available in the list, some were not. This just means that the tool is not 100% accurate and is best to use caution when using the tool, as the data provided may not be correct all the time.
I did a check to verify the "GPF" Google Phrase Frequency. Esitbot stated for MusicForMoney.com is 465M… Not so true visiting Google directly.. "music for money" with quotes doing a direct search on Google, shows me 24K results. Doing a search without quotes.. displayed 185M. Not sure where Estibot came up with the 465M but according to Google, that number wasn’t even close to what Estibot provided. Numbers can range based on your region of where you search, but not by 300M.
Tools like this should only be a Guide! It is a "tool"! Yes, it would be nice if the builders of the tools provided more accurate results, but that is life sometimes! You just have to decide if the tools is worth using or not.
Now I wasn’t picking on just Estibot, that was just an example to prove a point.
Tools like Whois should just be considered as a guide. The most accurate data is going to come directly from the Registry (for the specific TLD) but the registry does not provide the domain owners name and many of the data points services like DomainTools.com offers. Keep in mind that anybody can put any info in for "Name, City, State, Zip, Phone, Email". Domain sales reported on sites like NameBio.com, DnJournal.com etc are mainly accurate but from time to time domains get reported that were technically not just domain sales and it was a website/domain sale. (mainly with Sedo) Sometimes there is a typo, added 0 and so on when these sales are reported from the source of the sale. Freshdrop.net offers a lot of metrics, but many of them are way off if you manually check yourself. Most of the data that is incorrect has to do with "search engines", often times Links, PR, Indexed pages, search frequency etc.
The biggest thing I want you to be aware of, is that not everything you see provided from a tool is correct!
Anytime you use a tool, keep in mind that it IS a tool and should only be using it as a guide. Tools are often built on "settings" that are in place to check based on what the builder of the tool puts in. Computers are smart, but they have to be told and provided what to get. Then based on what it is told to get, that data has to be accurate from that source and so on. It is always best to do further research and never put your full trust into the metrics provided by one specific tool. Doing some manual checking is always wise and you may find some tools that are always accurate after doing more manual checking. Those are good tools but are often hard to come by.
