• determine domain registrar
• domain status
• expiration date
• name servers
• locate both administrative & technical contacts
• locate IP addresses
• and more

But there are other uses for Who.is that you may find useful… most of them dealing with expanding your domain search or usage.

Expiring Domains &  Domain Name Recommendations

You may not be aware but there are hundreds of excellent quality domain names expiring everyday either because they have been forgotten to be renewed or have been simply let go. To check on these domains, you can use the Who.is tool that lets you identify and register expiring or recently expired domains. Who.is will let you view up to six Top Level Domains (TLD), i.e, .com, .net, .org, .info, .us and .biz. You can perform the search by keyword or keyword phrase and once you’ve found a good name you can even go so far as to view the domain’s backlinks.

Want to ‘do your own thing’ but think all the ‘good’ domain names are taken? Then try the Who.is domain suggestion tool that makes it easy to view closely related domain names that are available. This tool bases the search on one of your relevant keywords and then fine tunes your search to get the best domain name available.

Website Information

If you’re thinking of advertising your site on another website, then you want to select the best site out there based on its Alexa ranking and traffic data. And, this same information can also be used to monitor your own site or your competitor’s site if you want to see what the competitions doing. Another perk is that historical information is available anywhere from one day to three months.

This information tool also give you data relevant to…

• domain contact info
• how site compares in speed to other sites
• keywords
• traffic data
• subdomains
• and more

Different TDL’s (Top Level Domains)

We’ll briefly cover the different types of domains and what the name means here. Aside from the .com, .net, .edu, .gov and the like being classified as generic TLDs, there are also ‘country code’ TLD  (ccTLD) names available. You may recognize some of the country code domains on sites you have visited but not known that they were in fact representative of other countries.

For example, www.who.is has the ‘is’ extension which is the ccTLD of Iceland – while some of the television and video sites like to use the ccTLD from Tuvalu which is .tv. Innovative way to ‘brand’ a site if you’re niche is video or television.

What TLD Parts Mean

So what do the different parts of a domain name mean? There are three parts to the name as defined below and shown in red . . .

Top level – this is the extension (.com, .net, .gov, and so on)  -  www.domain.com

Second level – is the name that refers to or identifies the website – www.domain.com

Third level – is at the beginning of the name and identifies where the site can be found - www.domain.com

Understanding what a domain name is, how it works and why you want to maintain control will go a long way to maintaining control of your domain as well as having a successful Internet business.

If you have hired someone to build your site or if you have used someone other than one of the better known domain registers – GoDaddy, Network Solutions, etc. – there is a way to verify you are in fact registered as the owner of your domain. You can go to the website www.who.is and search for the registering information. This is quick and easy to do.

We’ve placed a series of images below taking you through the process. Please note that while we’ve used an actual domain that is in a hostage situation, we’ve changed the information referencing the domain name and the company that did the registering to maintain both parties privacy. We have noted all replaced information in red to show where you would look for either your domain name or the registering party.

In the first graphic, we show you where you would type in the domain name in question. You then click on the small black arrow next to ‘whois’ and select from the drop-down menu the search you want to perform. In our case we want ‘whois’. Once you’ve selected this click on the ‘Who.is.Search’ button.

You will then see a screen that displays the registering information for that domain. In this case you can see that the domain is through GoDaddy.

However, if you continue down the page you will see who has control. In this case, our dummy company ‘Other, Inc’ has control even though it was registered through GoDaddy…. by them.  

If you continue to scroll down, you will see a line of code that reads something like….

For complete domain details go to:

http://who.godaddy.com/whoischeck.aspx?Domain=THEDOMAIN.COM

Copy and paste that link into your browser’s address bar. This will take you to the rest of the information available. Once there you will see the information that has been registered for this domain and can verify if you are the registrant …. or not. You will also find out who are the Administrative and Technical contacts as well as finding out where the registrant is located, if it’s not you.

Continue down this page and you also find out about the registry status. In other words whether or not you have access to Delete, Renew, Transfer or Update the domain. If your website has been ‘hijacked’, you’ll probably find all of these actions have been blocked as in our actual domain who.is search below.

Should you find yourself in this situation what do you do? I’ll leave you with some thoughts:

• Ask the registering party to release your domain… they may be honest and do it
• If they want a fee of some sort, depending on your situation, you may be willing to pay the price to get your domain name transferred to you from those in control
• Get a new domain name (you may think about using  the same name but with hyphens) and put up a new website
• Wait for the domain name to become available, if the wait is short,  and try to buy it yourself before they renew it

It’s a shame that there are some that would take advantage of unsuspecting clients and do this, but if you go into a business meeting fore-warned and with some basic knowledge about how domain registrations work… you’re less likely to be taken advantage of  and find yourself retaining control of your Internet business.

Don’t miss next week’s post when we’ll talk about some of the other things you can do using who.is.

Currently there are 22 gTLDs (generic Top Level Domains).  Some that you are probably familiar with are .com, .net, .org, .gov, .edu and so on. However, the new plan allows for people to apply for a gTLD using a brand name. What this means is that the Coco-Cola Corporation could apply for a domain name that had the extension .cococola  or  Dell Computer could apply for .dell  . . . .  taking the Internet to a new level.

You’ll want to think twice about making application because all applicants must pay a $185,000 “evaluation” fee with $5,000 of that paid upfront. Some cases will cost even more where “specialized process steps are applicable”. All this in addition to any costs associated with the business start-up means this new gTLD is for the ‘big guys’.

Applications will start being accepted between January 12 and April 12, 2012. At that time ICANN will publish a list of the requested gTLDs as well as allowing any objections to be filed. The evaluation process is projected to take eight (8) to eighteen (18) months. Once approved the applicant will be required to conclude an agreement with ICANN as well as pass technical predelegation tests before the gTLD will be live on the web.

So what does this have to do with the ‘average’ Internet marketer? Probably not much, but it is always good to know what’s happening in the Internet world so that you can stay current and not be taken in by those who would take advantage of the unsuspecting and un-educated.

If you have plans to start an Internet business, it’s easy…. do it yourself!

• Register your own domain
• Secure your own hosting

Anytime you go through a third-party you put yourself at risk to lose control of not only your website but also your domain name – or pay a hefty ‘fee’ to get control of what legally should already be yours.