Over a decade in the making…
When a data nerd discovers a data faucet and a very long-term project is the result.
It started with a domain search
The scene was early 2013 and the head Data Nerd was on the hunt for a new domain name for a side project, but inspiration just wouldn't come. Some registrars offered those "name-spinner" tools that spit out generic suggestions, but they don't really help when you want something with a bit of character and history behind it.
That search led down a rabbit hole into expired domain lists, and by chance, he stumbled across the daily Australian domain drop list. A light bulb lit up above his head.
No, literally. There was a fire alarm. Temporarily excused from work for an hour while the fire department attended the scene, he sat in the car park and his brain quietly hatched a plan.
The cron job that started it all
You see, this Data Nerd was also a web hosting guy, going all the way back to 1999. He had a particular set of skills that included Linux web hosting and cron jobs.
What’s a cron job? (Explain it like I’m five)
Think of a cron job as a really reliable alarm clock for a computer. You set it up once, tell it “run this script every day at 3am”, and it just… does it. Forever. Rain, hail, or shine. No app to open, no reminder to set. It runs quietly in the background while you sleep, and by the time you wake up, the job is already done.
Armed with a shiny data faucet and a Linux hosting account, the Data Nerd fired up his daily cron job, then largely forgot about it for a couple of months. When his next project needed a domain, he jumped back in and discovered almost 40,000 pre-loved .com.au domains quietly sitting in the database, accumulated while he wasn't watching. The cron job had been doing its thing every single day without a fuss.
A decade of daily Australian domain data
The rest, folks, is kind of history.
The project did start life with a way cheesier name, one we’re a little too embarrassed to repeat. But it’s currently available in the SharkDEX with a Score of 87, if you must know. What makes this even better: the domain you’re on right now, domainshark.com.au, was itself discovered by the Data Nerd in the SharkDEX database in early 2024. Found in your own database. Poetic, really.
There are a couple of small gaps in the data from periods when the cron job couldn’t run, but we’ll fill those in over time. Right now, DomainShark is home to 3,852,295 Australian domains archived since 2013, over a decade of solid daily drop data you can use to sniff out a name for your next project, just like our guy did.
Start your search in the SharkDEX and see what’s waiting for you.
Happy hunting.