Domain WHOIS Lookup

What Is Domain WHOIS Lookup?

A Domain WHOIS Lookup retrieves publicly available registration information associated with a domain name. Depending on the domain extension, registry, registrar and applicable privacy rules, the information can include the registrar, registration date, last updated date, expiry date, domain status, authoritative name servers and publicly available registration contact information.

Where a registration authority makes contact information available, a lookup may return information such as a registrant or organisation name, postal address, telephone number, email address and administrative or technical contact details. However, modern registration systems frequently redact personal information, meaning that these fields may not be available.

Why Use Domain WHOIS Lookup?

A domain lookup provides a convenient way to inspect publicly available registration information without installing specialist software or manually querying registration-data services.

How to Use Domain WHOIS Lookup

You only need the domain name you want to investigate to perform a lookup.

1. Enter a domain name — Type a domain such as example.com into the lookup field.
2. Start the lookup — Select Look Up Domain to request publicly available registration data.
3. Review the results — Examine the domain, registrar, registration dates, expiry date, status codes and name servers.
4. Check contact information — Review any publicly available registrant, administrative or technical contact information, including addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses where supplied.
5. Inspect the returned data — Expand the returned registration data section if you need to inspect the underlying RDAP response.

What Information Does a Domain WHOIS Lookup Show?

The exact information returned by a domain WHOIS lookup depends on the top-level domain, registry, registrar and applicable privacy policies. Common registration information includes the domain name, registrar, registrar identifier, creation date, modification date and expiration date.

Technical information such as authoritative name servers, DNSSEC information and domain status codes may also be available. Registration contact information can sometimes include a person's or organisation's name, postal address, telephone number, email address and separate administrative or technical contacts.

However, contact information is increasingly subject to privacy and data-protection restrictions. A result showing "Not publicly disclosed" does not mean that the domain has no registrant or contact information; it means that the relevant information was not publicly returned to this lookup.

Domain Registration and Expiry Dates

The registration date indicates when the domain was registered according to the available registration record. The last updated date can indicate when registration information was changed, while an expiration date represents the expiry event recorded by the relevant registration authority.

Domain Status Codes

Domain status codes describe conditions or restrictions associated with a domain. They can indicate that a domain is protected against deletion, transfer or modification, or that it has another status defined by the applicable registry or registrar.

Registration Contact Information

Some registration records may contain contact information for the registrant, administrative contact and technical contact. Depending on what the registry publishes, these records can contain names, organisations, postal addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and other contact information.

WHOIS and RDAP Registration Data

WHOIS is a long-established system for accessing domain registration information. RDAP, or Registration Data Access Protocol, is a newer structured registration-data protocol designed to provide machine-readable responses and support modern Internet registration services.

This tool uses publicly accessible RDAP data to retrieve registration information. The lookup service identifies an appropriate registration-data source for the domain and returns the information made available by that source.

A domain may return limited information or no usable public registration data even when it exists. This can occur because of registry policies, privacy restrictions, unsupported domain extensions, temporary service problems or limitations imposed by registration-data providers.

Frequently Asked Questions