How to build a specialist drop list?

[FCP]

What method do people use to build their own drop lists?

 

[monaghan]

depends what you are after, basically you want to find as many words / domain names as possible, filter the crap and pupm them through the DAC and that's your list. People spend quite a lot of time preparing this sort of thing, so don't expect too many detailed replies.

Alternatively you can buy weekly / monthly drop lists from many of the members here.

 

[grantw]

I've done my own for years but if the paid options were available back when I started I would have paid for the lists instead - its a pain in the ass!

Grant

 

[Skinner]

I do believe you can buy the 'zone' file or UK equivilent of 2 million domains/records (o0o deja vu) for about £50 and then run your own queries on that. Getting so much easier aint it heh.

Remember that it will be out of date within minutes tho, and prob already a week out of date anyway, that takes care of pre-reg names.

 

[grantw]

I do believe you can buy the 'zone' file or UK equivilent of 2 million domains/records (o0o deja vu) for about £50 and then run your own queries on that. Getting so much easier aint it heh

That's the easy part, the pain in the arse is wasting your time/dac allowance scanning 2 - 3 million domains.

Grant

 

[Skinner]

Obtaining the data, getting it into a DB and then querying it, to extract the data you want is the harder bit to me, mess up that query and your server is Jelly, mess up a calculation and your chasing ghosts. The mount of info in each record would be a major factor too.

If i had Dac access I wouldnt waste is on this anyway, more than 1 way to a skin a cat

 

[grantw]

If i had Dac access I wouldnt waste is on this anyway, more than 1 way to a skin a cat

indeed, pay £xx a month and get decent lists emailed to you

Grant

 

[aquanuke]

I do believe you can buy the 'zone' file or UK equivilent of 2 million domains/records (o0o deja vu) for about £50 and then run your own queries on that. Getting so much easier aint it heh.

What good is 2 million names the current UK db is well over 6 million registered.

 

[Skinner]

Grant, how can you be sure the list hasnt been cherry picked?

Aquanuke, I don't know what the list contains, I just saw one a day or so ago for £50 that said 2 million records. I thought would be more than 6 million, as the people on this forum alone prob total 1% of that.

I assume such a file would only have X many months worth of domains maybe the ones that are expiring in the next year ? Until someone who has bought the file says whats in the file, I can't tell ya

 

[monaghan]

Obtaining the data, getting it into a DB and then querying it, to extract the data you want is the harder bit to me, mess up that query and your server is Jelly, mess up a calculation and your chasing ghosts. The mount of info in each record would be a major factor too.

Even a fairly basic MySQL config will handle a few million records, import from plain text format (or any other format) is not that difficult (if you're on a Linux / Unix platform you'll have awk and other text processing tools to automate any pre-load data prep)

 

[grantw]

Grant, how can you be sure the list hasnt been cherry picked?

You can't I guess. If you buy your list from Dale (droppings.co.uk) he doesnt catch himself so has no reason to cherry pick it - also if someone was selling cherry picked lists it would be business suicide if it got out.

Grant

 

[Skinner]

Sorry I didnt mean for me personally, I meant that seems like it would be the hardest bit for most people. (previously posted as a problem for someone who was probably using this very file).

 

[aquanuke]

Aquanuke, I don't know what the list contains, I just saw one a day or so ago for £50 that said 2 million records. I thought would be more than 6 million, as the people on this forum alone prob total 1% of that.

I can say that list is based on the last .uk zone file about 4 years ago which is about 2.2 million and its not very good. Save your money not worth £50, you can d/l it free quite easily.

 

[FCP]

In theory would you create a list of domains (from what ever source) and hit the DAC. Will this respond letting you know if the domain is available, registered, suspended? Is it easy to put this information in a file?

 

[grantw]

In theory would you create a list of domains (from what ever source) and hit the DAC. Will this respond letting you know if the domain is available, registered, suspended? Is it easy to put this information in a file?

In all seriousness, if you don't know how to get the data into a list/database and then write the code to query the data I would honestly pay for the droplists.

Grant

 

[Skinner]

I would put that info into a database.

If you have php/asp query the dac/whois2 with your source data and then put the results into destination database. You can then query your results easier and have your system automatically run off the destination database. Saves running the data up and down if its all on the server there and then.

I agree with Grant, buy the list, DropSystems list looks pretty good ad its set by day, so easy reference, and includes upto 15,000 names a month too.

 

[monaghan]

You could save the DAC reply to a file, but I'd have thought putting the reply in a database would give you more flexibility than flat file and then you can do things like

select * from domain_list where drop_date = tomorrow

so you can pick which domains you want to catch tomorrow.

Take a read of Instructions for Use to see what you can do with the DAC

 

[Darren]

Here is a .UK zone file which can be found on the internet easily:

http://www.goldfrog.co.uk/co.uk.zone.zip

 

[Skinner]

The one I saw was http://www.****************/ukzonefilesforsale.html I wasnt sure about posting the link since it maybe a rule breaker but I guess admin type person can delete it if if it is

It says upto date.

Best guess is it covers 3-6 months of expiring domains.

Someone asked about databases of 2million records about a week ago my guess is they are using this, so maybe worth asking them what exactly it stores as in domain name, create date, expirary date, updated, status etc etc.

 

[Skinner]

Well that answers the question and I was right about it being against the rules, I thought it would be but it was one of them sites where I was 50/50