Domain name research tools can help in your quest to find an available domain name that suits your business or personal requirements. Each resource has been rated from (lowest) to (highest) and resources are ranked by rating within each section.

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DomainDiscover Multiple Domain Lookup Tool
Capsule Review: At last, there's a site that will handle REALLY large lists of domain names to check. The multiple lookup tool at DomainDiscover will check several hundred domain names in a single operation (though you have to be prepared to wait up to 5 minutes for the results to be returned when checking VERY long lists of names). The results are divided into two categories: "available" and "taken"; you can follow links next to each of the "taken" names to look at the detailed Whois record for that name. NOTE: If you process multiple searches in quick succession, each of which contains hundreds of domains, you may find yourself locked out of the system due to overuse. If this happens to you, you'll need to wait 24 hours for the system to reset itself and unlock again. Despite this small restriction, this tool gets Highly Recommended.

Whois.net
Capsule Review: Whois.net offers several very useful features, including a search tool with wildcards so that you can step through lists of registered names. The most important feature of this site, however, is the "deleted domain search", which lets you search through a huge database of domain names that used to be registered, but whose registrations lapsed because the renewal fees were not paid on those domains. Using the "advanced search" option, you can specify the beginning or end of a domain name and look through all the recently available names. So for example, I could choose to search on "free" and get a list of all the domain names beginning with "free". This tool can help you to pick up some real bargains as it is amazing what great names other people have thought up, registered and then allowed to lapse unpaid. The only downside to the service is that in about 10% of cases the domain name has already been re-registered, since Whois.net only updates its database every few days. Still, this site wins my very highest recommendation! Highly Recommended.

DomainInspect.com
Capsule Review: DomainInspect is a feature-rich domain name checker software, enabling you to quickly and conveniently find desired domain names to register. The built-in database embraces more than 100 popular gTLDs and ccTLDs. You may choose to manually input domain names, import domain name list in a file, or have domain names based on keywords automatically generated. DomainInspect simultaneously checks availability of more than one domain names at a time, and the result can be saved, printed, or exported into other formats like Excel, HTML, etc.

DeletedDomains.com
Capsule Review: DeletedDomains unlocks the "secrets" of expiring domain names. Even more remarkably, it offers this information free of charge. Through the search tool on the site, you can look for domain names that have been placed on hold or deleted in the last 24 hours, or during various periods that you specify. You can qualify your search by for example excluding all domain names containing a "-" or a number, or limiting it to a single extension such as ".com". By working with this search tool and feeding it the appropriate keywords, you'll often find many expired domains that you'd never otherwise realize were available. Click here to read an in-depth report on how to make the most of the search tool offered by DeletedDomains.  Highly Recommended.

DomainSearch.com
Capsule Review: DomainSearch will enable you to look up a given domain name across over 50 of the most popular top-level and country-level domains in a single operation. Before performing your search, you can select any combination of countries by selecting them in the pull-down menu tool.

BetterWhois
Capsule Review: Because the Whois information lookup process has become so fragmented due to different registrars handling access to their Whois databases in different ways, it was high time for somebody to offer a simple tool that would look up a domain name, no matter where the underlying Whois information was kept. That tool exists at BetterWhois! Now you no longer have to concern yourself about which registrar was used to register a domain name when doing lookups. The only downside to this otherwise useful site is that you're limited to looking up a single name at a time.

SnapItNow
Capsule Review: SnapItNow helps you to brainstorm and come up with available domain names in your area of interest. By entering keywords, and combining them with various categories (e.g. "US States") you can automatically generate lists of all the available domain names around your chosen theme. You can refine your search by specifying the ending (choice of .com, .net and .org), by automatically repeating the search with hyphens between your keywords, and by flip-flopping your keywords (i.e. "keyword1 keyword2" and "keyword2 keyword1" are both tested)

Marketleap Link Popularity Tool
Capsule Review: This tool allows you to get a quick snapshot of the "link popularity" (number of incoming links recorded in various search engines) of up to 4 domain names at a time. This comes in handy when you're researching expiring domain names that used to belong to a site, since instead of having to make the slow trek to each search engine, you get instant feedback on all the major search engines from one screen. NOTE: This tool sometimes gets confused by the presence of country-level extensions in a domain name so that e.g. a search for "mother.com" will also show links containing "mother.com.au" - if a completely accurate reading of link popularity is a must, you'll have to manually check the domain name a second time on each of the search engines.

SnapNames Multi-Domain Search
Capsule Review: This tool will enable you to check the availability of domain names in batches of up to 100 names at a time. One great feature worth mentioning is that the search tool automatically checks each of the .com, .net and .org extensions if no extension is specified, so you can essentially build up a stream-of-consciousness word-list and then check the entire list with a single click.

Register.com Bulk Domain Lookup Tool
Capsule Review: While this tool is limited to checking batches of just 30 domain names at a time, it goes beyond the other bulk checking tools on this page by allowing bulk searches on the .biz, .ws and .info extensions as well as the 3 "traditional" top domains. NOTE: During periods when their system is extremely heavily loaded, Register.com tends to impose a lower limit on the number of domain names that can be checked in one lookup operation, sometimes lowering the threshold to as few as 5 names.