Ever had questions about who is the owner/admin behind a website?You may want to check if the site you are reading is give false information. You may want to check the owner of the site and contact him if you are interested with his website. You want to apply for a job using a website, is this a legit website? You may be sending your resume to someone who will take advantage of the information. It is important that you know how to check a domain/website for many different reasons. Many don’t know how to do this and have several questions.
These are very common questions below.
- Ever wonder who owns a specific domain/website name? Like facebook.com, palahubog.com, google.com.
- How do we find out who owns these websites?
- Where to we find relevant information for these websites?
- Like when they were created?
- When do they expire?
- Where are they hosted?
- Who registered these domains?
- Can we buy the website from them?
Many of these questions can be answered by a simple public database called the whois.
WHOIS (pronounced as the phrase who is) is a query/response protocol that is widely used for querying databases in order to determine the registrant or assignee of Internet resources, such as a domain name, an IP address block, or an autonomous system number. WHOIS lookups were traditionally performed with a command line interface application, and network administrators predominantly still use this method, but many simplified web-based tools exist. Below are a few of the web-based tools you can use for free.
What will you find in a whois look up? Here are useful information on what you will find in a whois lookup.
Lets do a whois lookup on facebook.com and I will label the important things that you can find out about the domain. Below is the whois result for facebook.com and I have labeled the important information with Rastafari color in the results. Click the image for a larger view.
A sample whois lookup of facebook.com
A domain name registrar is an organization or commercial entity, accredited by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) or by a national country code top-level domain (ccTLD) authority, to manage the reservation of Internet domain names in accordance with the guidelines of the designated domain name registries and offer such services to the public.
A registrant is the person who owns and probably did the registration of the domain. He went to a registrar company to register the domain so that he can use it for a website or an email.
A nameserver is the server or host of the domains. This can be a server pointing to another server where the website is hosted or stored.
Was that easy? This tool is very useful if you really are into websites. If you are buying and selling domains this would really come handy. Even if you are just speculating if this website is having legit programs or information, you can check it from the whois if they are who they say they are.
