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Classic WHOIS User Guide

Introduction

The WHOIS results page consists of four major sections:

  • The Domain Profile — A summary of key data about the domain that comes from the WHOIS record itself as well as other data sources maintained by DomainTools.
  • The Raw WHOIS Record — Provided directly from the authoritative WHOIS server.
  • The Tools Section — Providing access to DomainTools research and monitoring products.
  • Available TLDs — Showing registration status for the same domain name in other generic and country Top Level Domains (TLDs).

Domain Profile

A simple key/value table shows the relevant data for each field. The table consists of two sections, which can be collapsed or expanded for convenience:

  • WHOIS & Quick Stats
  • Website

Several of the fields in WHOIS & Quick Stats contain data that can be further explored by jumping to other research tools:

  • Registrant Email: If the email address(es) of the registrant are associated with other domains, you can jump to a Reverse WHOIS page for that email address, showing the other domains associated with it.
  • Registrant Organization: If the registrant is associated with other domains, you can jump to a Reverse WHOIS page showing those domains.
  • IP Address: If other domains are hosted on the same IP address, you can jump to a Reverse IP page showing those domains.
  • Name Servers: If other domains are served by the same name server(s), you can jump to a Reverse Name Server page for that server showing the domains it serves.
  • WHOIS History: If DomainTools has historical WHOIS records for the domain, you can jump to the WHOIS History page to explore these records.
  • IP, Registrar, and Name Server History: If DomainTools has historical records pertaining to these hosting parameters, you can jump to a Hosting History page for the domain.

Note: The tools listed above are for DomainTools Personal or Enterprise members. If you are not a member, or are not logged in, each of the tools referred to above will take you to a preview page which presents a partial view of the data that is available to logged-in members.

Website

This section helps round out your at-a-glance summary of the domain. Information shown here helps give a sense of the website’s prominence and relevance on the Internet, and allows you to draw some inferences about the nature of the site.

WHOIS Record

The actual WHOIS record, as pulled directly from the WHOIS server, is displayed here.

Availability in Other Top Level Domains (TLDs)

Whether or not you are interested in acquiring the domain you looked up, it can be useful to see the registration status for the same domain name in other generic or country code TLDs. This section has a separate tab for generic TLDs and ccTLDs, with the availability shown for each TLD.

  • If the domain in question is taken, you can click a link to see the WHOIS results page for the domain.
  • If the domain is available, you can click a link to register the domain.

Tools

Since the WHOIS results page is often the starting point for an investigation, you can jump immediately to other tools to explore further. For each of these other tools, the context of the domain from the WHOIS record is retained.

For example, the Monitors tools will monitor pertinent datapoints from the domain you entered in your WHOIS lookup, such as the registrant, IP, name server or the domain itself.

You can jump from the WHOIS page to other DomainTools research tools from the controls in this section:

  • Preview Full Domain Report — Takes you to a summary of the report, which you can choose to download if your subscription allocation permits.
  • Monitors — Allows you to quickly configure monitors for different datapoints from the Domain Profile:
  • Domain Monitor: Alerts you to status changes to the domain
  • Registrant Monitor: Allows you to monitor any of the email addresses associated with the registrant, to detect registration activities tied to that email address
  • IP Monitor: Alerts you to domains that are pointed to or away from the IP address that hosts this Domain
  • Name Server Monitor: Alerts you to any domains that are added to or removed from this name server
  • WHOIS History — Allows you to explore the historical WHOIS records for this domain in the DomainTools database
  • Reverse WHOIS — See the other domains associated with the selected registrant email address
  • Reverse IP — See what other domains are hosted on the same IP address
  • Reverse Name Server — See what other domains are served by the selected name server
  • Hosting History — At-a-glance historical information about the IP addresses the domain was hosted on, its name servers, and the registrars of the domain
  • Network Tools — Perform Ping, Traceroute, or NS Lookups on the domain
  • Visit Website — Opens a new tab with the home page for the domain
  • Screenshot — By default, an approximately 4:3 thumbnail is shown; click the thumbnail to expand to the full length of the current screenshot. You can also see Screenshot History for the domain, and can queue the domain for an updated screenshot.