Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

I’ve been using DomainTools – the paid version – since mid-2006.

During those past five years, I discovered my “addiction” to this indispensable WHOIS tool and here are a few reasons why:

• It’s fast. Even if other WHOIS services claim to be faster, DomainTools delivers more information on that single page.
• It’s accurate. Even the most obscure domain names seem to be scanned for changes, daily.
• Historical WHOIS allows me to do in-depth ownership checks before registering, buying or bidding on domains. It has also given me the ability to locate the owners of stolen domains and to assist with their return.

DomainTools is by far the #1 query tool for domainers – Silver memberships cost only $15 /month. Well worth it!

The new Google search changes have created plenty of noise worldwide – as it was to be expected.

While it remains to be seen how much of this technology will be adopted by the daily searchers (the feature can be turned off, by the way) the technology itself is hardly new.

In terms of an early adopter of a live search, the feature was used with the DomainTools subtool, PsychicWHOIS.

It’s a great tool that utilizes ajax technology to display results as they are being typed. One can quickly tap parts of a domain name and view a drop down list of existing names that match that partial search and then you can view the WHOIS information. Really fast and efficient.

Regardless of technology, Google seems to have created a storm in a bottle; Elliot Silver has already pointed out the pitfalls of searching with the new live tool.

As I’m writing this, DomainTools is down “for maintenance” purposes. I’m not sure for how long it’ll be but currently I’m being inconvenienced, especially since I want to use their WHOIS tool which I pay extra for. DomainTools offers a remarkable history of WHOIS data that has assisted many times with the recovery of stolen domains.

But that’s another story. Right now, I want to look up some domains, damn it.

Enter v3whois, a little known but very effective WHOIS tool that offers fast, straight off the cuff WHOIS data in a split second. Instead of waiting for DomainTools’ overloaded page that nowadays features banner ads, blog entries, suggested domains for sale and thumbnail archives, you get the output with a couple of AdSense ads. And that’s fine with me.

The benefit of v3whois is not only its speed but also its multi-TLD lookup. Sporting 25 (!) TLDs in one screen,  the multi-TLD mode is great for researching the owners of a particular keyword. At a glance, you will be able to see whether there are German, Canadian, Italian, French, Swedish etc. domains with the same main part. And that’s an indispensable feature whether you’re buying, bidding on or selling a domain. You will be able to quickly associate offers for your .com coming from other countries and thus increase your radius of negotiation.

Try it: v3whois.com – it’s free.