ZFBot – The Encyclopedia of .com

Every once in a while, a neat web application shows up and then you scratch your head wondering – “Now, why didn’t I think of that first?” Without much debating on the issue of one’s dying braincells, I’d like to introduce ZFBot and its creator, Ken Greenwood. In this quick, impromptu interview Ken talks about his product that he offers for free at http://www.ZFBot.com

So Ken, what exactly is ZFBot.com and what does it do?

ZFBot.com is a web application that gives anyone the ability to easily and quickly find .com domain names that are actively registered. I like to refer to it as an encyclopedia of all registered .com’s. The Z is for Zone and the F is for file… so it’s the Zone File Robot. And the domain sounds like your saying “The F Bot” in German. 🙂 The application also keeps track of the count of registered .com’s in total and broken down by letter combinations. Currently, there are approximately 80 million registered .com domain names.

Can you outline the process steps in not too technical terms?

Sure. I’ll try not to get too technical. At a high level, there are 3 key layers, so to speak, that make up the ZFbot.com application.

1. The data. The data file, which contains every registered .com on the internet, is retrieved from Verisign – the primary directory provider of all .com domains. The file is around 7 gigabyte in size and contains roughly 185 million records – multiple records per domain due to the fact that there can be multiple name servers associated with each domain.
2. The data crunch. The downloaded Verisign file is automatically bulk loaded daily into a MySQL database table via a script that I wrote. The script then starts “crunching” through the records on that one massive table and splits the data off in to roughly 750 tables – one for each two letter/digit combination (For example: aa, ab, ac, ad, etc… and 1a, 1b, etc). You may ask “Why would you split the data out in to several hundred tables?” The answer to that question is Performance. It was critical that the results were presented to the user of the application as quickly as possible and querying a table with 185 million records would take an unacceptable amount of time. Yes, I could have used one of several built in database techniques to assist with the performance (ie. building indexes, partitioning the table, etc) but all of them would have added significant overhead and time to rebuilding the data on a daily basis. The live status of the data crunch is displayed and scrolled directly on the ZFBot.com application.
3. The user interface/website. Although the core of the application is highly technical, I am also a stickler about aesthetics and usability… and I wanted the application to be aesthetically pleasing, relevant and very easy to use. I chose to use Adobe’s Flex as the tool to build the user interface because it satisfied those requirements (and because I do a lot of work in Flex!)

Is there a market for such a tool – how would one use it?

Well, aside from building web applications like ZFBot.com, I’ve been buying/selling/developing domain names since the mid 1990’s. And in opinion, in order for a domainer to be as successful as he or she can possibly be in regards to selling domain names, they need to exhaust every research avenue available to them to learn about the domain names within their portfolio. Yes, there are major website forums (ie dnforum.com) that a domainer can visit to post their domain for sale. But those sales are to resellers for the most part… not end users. And anyone in the domain name business knows that end users pay a lot more for a domain that they want and that means a higher profit for the domainer. And the avenue that the ZFBot.com application provides to the domainer is the ability to very easily and quickly find potential customers for their domains.

Let me explain – before I buy a domain name (typically in an auction), I do plenty of research on that domain. And one critical step in that research process is to find out if there are any individuals or companies (preferably big companies) using a domain similar to the one that I’m about to try to acquire. If I find out that there are – I’m willing to pay more for that domain because there is a good chance that the company or individual, if contacted properly, is willing to pay (sometimes handsomely) for the domain. I’ll give you a specific example… A few months ago I saw that a domain was going to drop – I’ll protect the privacy of the company and let’s say it was companyname.com. Well, a quick Google search revealed that there was a company in the UK operating their business under the domain name companynameinternational.com. I ended up picking the domain companyname.com up in auction for around $300 bucks, contacted the company in the UK in a professional and courteous manner asking them if they were interested in the domain and if so, to make me a reasonable offer. I received an email two days later and we negotiated a price of $3000 USD for the domain. Not bad – a profit of $2700 in 3 days.

Here’s where the beauty of the ZFBot.com application comes in – you don’t need to manually figure out what to search for on Google… the ZFBot.com application will show you ALL of the .com domains that are currently registered that match the domain you may currently own or are thinking of acquiring. After I first built the application and tested it out, I was enlightened by the number of actively registered .com’s that matched domains within my portfolio. These are all potential customers of mine and can be contacted by retrieving the WHOIS info or accessing the actual website – both of which be done directly from the ZFBot.com application. ZFBot.com search results can be exported to an Excel spreadsheet so that you can do your contact leg work at a later time and not have to worry about forgetting what domains you had found.

I’m currently working on further functionality to the ZFBot.com application that will give users the ability to see expiration dates on all domains and a list of domains that are going to drop or go to auction within the next few days.

What is your opinion about current technology available to domainers?

I believe that pretty much all the technology and information that a domainer needs (or individuals in any other business for that matter) already exists on the internet. The solutions are just scattered all over the place, are sometimes antiquated and in general take a lot of time to find and sift through. Heck – I seriously don’t know what I would do without the awesome power of Google. You can find the answer to any question you might have – however technical or obscure the question/answer may be… with a few minutes of research on Google.

I remember the days where an individual would have to go to the library or to a class at a university to learn how to do something. An intelligent, eager and creative individual need not always take that old school approach any longer. The main reasons I built the ZFBot.com application were curiosity, a sense of challenge and a need of my own to trim down on domain research time. Plus it’s a fun to use application.

I’ve also built a few applications for domainers to both manage and showcase their domains – those can be found at Domainerport.com and Domainerport.com/showcase respectively.

Ken, thank you very much for all this detailed and very interesting information!
Is there any personal info or a short bio you’d like to share?

Ken Greenwood, One World Media
Website/Web Application Design and Development since the mid 1990’s
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