What's New in DNSLister for July 2026: Why We Built It, Domain Score, Favorites, and Shareable Searches

This is the first of our monthly feature roundups, so it starts a little earlier than July: with why DNSLister exists at all. After that come the changes July brought, which turned a personal tool into something other people could use. Later months are linked at the bottom.

Why we started DNSLister

DNSLister began in early June 2026 as a fix for one frustrating afternoon. The domain search site we'd relied on for years kept timing out. Searches stalled behind bot-protection pages, and a list of a few hundred names would never finish.

What we actually wanted wasn't complicated. Take a word, say self, and try it in front of thousands of everyday dictionary words: selfstart, selfmade, selfcare, and so on. Then show only the ones that are still free. That meant three things the old tools did badly:

• Word lists you can build and save, not a fixed set someone else picked.
• Combining lists: put one word before or after every word in another list, or pair two lists together.
• Checks that finish. Thousands of lookups, run reliably, with an answer you can trust.

Every line was written for that one problem first. Most of the clients we take on come in with a domain name nobody can spell over the phone, and finding them something better used to take hours. With DNSLister it takes minutes. You can read more on the About page.

By the end of June the basics worked: saved word lists, prepend and append searches, and a background worker that checks names in bulk. July is when it got good.

Domain Score: which available names are worth having

A search can turn up hundreds of free names, and most of them are forgettable. July added a Domain Score to every result, so the strong ones rise to the top.

• Shorter roots score higher, and very long ones lose points.
• Pronounceable names win. Names you can say out loud, with a sensible mix of vowels and consonants and a reasonable number of syllables, score better than letter jumbles.
• Awkward letters cost points. Q, X and Z make a name harder to say and spell.
• Variety is rewarded. If a search returns twenty near-copies of the same idea, the repeats score lower, so you see a wider spread.
• Sort by score on your results to put the best names first.

The new Word Scoring FAQ explains every rule in plain language.

Favorites became a real shortlist

Favorites is where your finds go while you decide, and July rebuilt most of it:

• Tags. Group names by project or client, filter by tag, and export one tag at a time as CSV.
• Live status. Each saved domain shows whether it's still available, with a one-click refresh. Names can be taken while you think, so this matters.
• Bulk actions. Select rows to tag, refresh or remove them together, or remove everything that matches a pattern.
• Nothing is lost by accident. Removing a favorite is reversible. A "Recently Deleted" view lets you restore one, or a whole pattern of them.

Share your results, and rerun your own searches

• Public sharing. One click gives you a link to a search's results that anyone can open, no account needed. The page puts the available domains front and center, and explains how to run a similar search yourself. A shared link shows results only: visitors can't open or copy the search behind it, so your own word lists stay yours.
• Edit & Run Again. On any search in your own history, change a word list, an ending or a setting and run it again without rebuilding it from scratch.
• Stop and Resume. Stop a long search when you've seen enough, and resume one that was interrupted.

"Available" means available

A wrong "available" is the worst answer a domain tool can give: you get excited about a name that was never free. July added several layers of checking:

• A quick DNS answer that says "available" is now confirmed against the registry's own record (RDAP) before we show it.
• When a registry has no RDAP service, we fall back to WHOIS instead of guessing.
• For sale is its own category, so a parked name with a price tag isn't mixed in with free ones.
• Each result is marked Confirmed or Unconfirmed, and an Advanced Availability Report shows what every source said about a name.

Word lists anyone can browse

• Browse lists without an account. Public word lists are open to guests, organized by topic, with letter-by-letter browsing.
• Search every list at once from the new Words page.
• Bring your own words. Paste or import a CSV into a list, now on free accounts too, and export any list as CSV for free.
• New tools: Subset Combine, Filter a Wordlist, and prepend/append searches that use your own lists as the modifiers.
• Pick endings by group. A categorized TLD picker with a ready-made "Recommended" set, so you don't have to choose 30 endings one at a time.

Smaller things worth knowing

• Finder box. The search box in the menu bar finds tools, word lists and topics as you type.
• Faster searches. Lookups run in parallel and some checks happen right in your browser, so big searches finish much sooner.
• Help where you need it. A dismissible Getting Started panel, "What can I do here?" cards on the main pages, and a Beginner/Advanced switch that hides the expert controls until you want them.
• Stay signed in on every device, and sign-in is protected against password-guessing attacks.
• New pages: About, Contact, FAQ and Partners, all linked from the footer of every page.

Tell us what to build next

DNSLister started as one person's fix for one annoying problem, and most of what came after came from people telling us what got in their way. If something slows you down, send us a note. We read every one.

Want to see what came next? Read the roundups for August, September, October and November.