NameFiddle - FAQ

Q: What do you mean by claiming a domain name?

A: We help users claim unregistered, non-premium domain names which are relatively inexpensive to register. Premium and registered domain names might be available to buy directly or through negotiation, but generally at a much higher cost.

Q: Sometimes NameFiddle shows a domain as available for registration, but domain registrars don't list it as available. Why?

A: NameFiddle is not an ICANN accredited domain registrar so does not have access to the ultimate source of truth for domain registrations. We encourage users to confirm any results they see on NameFiddle with an ICANN accredited domain registrar (e.g. GoDaddy, Namecheap, etc.). However, there are several significant sources of information related to domains that we do have access to. We have developed some algorithms and heuristics to incorporate as much of the data we have access to and make it readily available to users so that our results are both fast and reasonably accurate. However, you may still run into an occasional inacuracy. Probably the most common instances where inacuracies exist would be the following, though in many cases we can detect these instances and still provide accurate results.

• The domain was registered a few hours ago.
• The domain recently expired or is in another of the less common states.
• The domain name has no assigned name servers.

Q: Can I register any available domain name?

A: There are important considerations beyond whether a domain name is available for registration, including but not limited to trademarks and copyrights. While we attempt to provide accurate information about whether domains are registered, we don't provide guidance about whether there are any legal issues around registering a particular domain.

Q: Is NameFiddle a work in progress? What changes or new features will be coming in the future?

A: We're often thinking about improvements even if we're not actively developing them. We try to prioritize improvements that will be most (and most often) useful to the highest number of users. We also try to keep things very simple - for you and for us. We know of many things we could do, but there are far fewer things that we likely will do. The improvements we are most likely to make might not always be obvious, but they should continually improve the usefulness of the results we provide.