Bulk Whois Lookups – #1 on My “Wish List”

I am frequently asked what types of tools I would want to help make my business life easier and more efficient. The one response that has stayed the same for years is a bulk Whois look up tool. I would like to be able to do Whois searches in bulk so I can analyze large lists of domain names.

I believe there is at least one website that offers bulk whois lookups, but I haven’t found one that offers it in the manner I would like to see it. Since there might be a company that can do this, I will share my thoughts on the ideal bulk Whois search tool:

The tool should be able to search hundreds of domain names at once. For example, I might have a keyword list of all types of sports (soccer, baseball, football, futbol…etc), and I can paste the entire list with the extension included. After a short period of time, the tool will spit out the following helpful results:

  • Registrant name, address, and phone
  • Registrant email
  • Creation and expiration dates
  • Registrar
  • Nameservers

To make this even easier for me, I would like to be able to download a csv file with the list so that I can manipulate the data and make it more useful and actionable for me.

I would need to trust the company that creates this tool because it would be very easy for the owner of the tool to analyze what I am researching and potentially use the data in a way that competes with me. A large company may be less likely to use my data when there are hundreds or thousands of other users, but a “friend” who builds this tool might gain access to information I might not want shared. Yes, there are ways for people to monitor what domain names I buy, but there is also Whois privacy available to allow me to shield the names I want to keep private.

I don’t think I would pay much for this tool, but I do think it would be popular. That means that it might not become a cash cow, but there are plenty of great companies that would advertise on a popular website that is visited by domain investors regularly.

If there is a tool like this and I am simply unaware of it, I hope you’ll share this information with me and others who read this. If you think a bulk Whois tool would be handy, let me know that as well, because that might encourage a company to build something that is desired by many others.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

12 COMMENTS

  1. This pretty much indicates why such a tool doesn’t exist:

    “I don’t think I would pay much for this tool, but I do think it would be popular.”

    No one wants to build a huge data base with bells and whistles and then get little reward for it.

    • True, but there are several companies that could enhance their tool offerings with this tool. In addition, I could see advertiser interest in promoting their businesses on a popular tool website.

  2. Elliot: you could use Domain Punch Professional to do all of that (it’s a software program). You can run whois checks on as many domains as you want, and you can also set the timing gap between lookups so your IP doesn’t get temporarily blacklisted for running too many lookups in succession.

    I’ve been using it for years to manage my domain portfolio, which now hovers around 500 domains, but has been much higher in the past. I can’t imagine going back to spreadsheets now!

    It’s not very expensive to buy and well worth getting.

  3. Hey Elliot,

    I was reading one of your recent articles about GDPR, and found this old one near the footer. Too bad I saw this post years later (now when it is impossible to show name, phone number, email), but we did have this tool for years. I hope you were able to work it out elsewhere.

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