Dofo Aggregates Domain Lookup Tools

I don’t know if the site goes by DoFo or Dofo or whatever, but I saw a link to it, tried it out, and want to share it with you in case you haven’t seen it or used it yet.

Working in conjunction with DomainTools, you can easily do a Whois search using Dofo. Obviously you can do that anywhere, so here’s what’s neat about Dofo. Instead of visiting a host of other websites to check out various analytics, you can do it all there on the same screen via framed redirected.

Some of the tools self-contained within Dofo include:

  • Screenshots.com and Archive.org results so you can see iterations of the site over time
  • Hosting and Nameserver history
  • Email blacklist information
  • Search engine backlink and indexed page results
  • Valuate appraisal tool

I don’t know if Dofo stands for something that I missed or if it’s just an easy brand name to remember, but it’s a neat little time saving tool you might want to try out the next time you are researching a domain name or website acquisition.

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

16 COMMENTS

  1. it’s a url shortener…it stands for dumb fucker but they changed the u’s to o’s. apparently they’re allowed to do that on the internet. i haven’t used it yet but it’s probably good…
    or not.

  2. The name DOFO is a contraction of DOmain inFO
    I found it was a good description of the service I had in mind, finally what I propose here is simply to obtain domain information.
    People has no clue what WHOIS means but can better imagine the meaning of domain information.

    The main and initial idea was to propose a shortner of my favorite WHOIS tool: DomainTools.com
    Unfortunately DomainTools.com is too long to write and half time I was doing typos when writing the name.
    So I thought it should be a great idea to can use a shorter name to access DomainTools.com

    In the past (few days ago), when I wanted to know if a domain was taken or who was the owner I used to type_in:
    http://domaintools.com/thedomain.com
    Now I type_in:
    http://dofo.com/thedomain.com
    It’s faster and made less errors.

    Many people contacted me saying it was a smart idea but they did not use DomainTools.com so yesterday I coded a way to use the tool with others WHOIS services so each one could continue using his preferred WHOIS service and at the same time benefit of the extras DOFO provide.

    The first extra and what is important for me as a domain buyer is to can easily check what the associated site look likes without spend time. So I coded the service to run within a frame, this way I can easily swap between the WHOIS and the site. It’s really user friendly to can watch the WHOIS or past screenshots from the same page.
    I selected a vertical frame because most people now have large screens and sites are coded to smaller screens so there is a lot of unused space in the sides.

    The other extras are all this collection of tools associated with a domain one can access it on the left pane.
    By the way if you feel I should add some specific tools or make some improvements you are welcome. It’s simply a first mock up and I am sure there is so much to do to improve it.

    The next improvement to come (probably should be up tonight) should be a button one can add in his Google toolbar to call DOFO for the current visited page and this way still save more times.

    Well, there is not huge preventions behind this service, simply help domain addicts like me.

    Now regarding the homepage and the seal, it’s simply I wanted associate DOFO to a mascot and I asked my 12 years old daughter, she said a seal will be cute.

    Thanks a lot Elliot for the unexpected but very appreciated announcement.

  3. @Francois Carrillo it’s a great idea for convenience sake but I should add my concern regarding the use of iframes. For one this could be considered as bandwidth leaching and if those site operators are concerned they may end up utilizing java frame breaker scripts as I do on my seo tools sites.

    For example if you where to frame cubestat.com its owner/operator would be cheesed off (I know him lol) and wouldn’t hesitate to add a frame breaker.

    Maybe API access to theses remote services would be a better solution – that is if an API was available. Exclusive permission rights to iframe theses services content could be another solution too.

    Anyways just a little webmaster food for thought, my 2¢ worth.

  4. if u do a dofo.com/dofo.com you get a domain tools page saying the domain dofo..com is for sale!

    Francis, did u intend to keep that up there?

  5. @Algis
    I was not aware, annyway the framed layout and the serie of DOFO tools should provide a better user experience.

    @JayJay
    WHOIS API is too expensive to be used to run a WHOIS LOOKUP service where income is based on advertising revenue, my ROI would have been negative without say I don’t have any intention to compete with established WHOIS services but at the inverse be a partner.
    Yes, I contacted them and all were happy to get additional free traffic. Only Susan of DomainTools.com still not responded but one of the owners liked the idea so I guess there is no problem.
    People only complaint when you frame their site to present it into a popunder where you waste their bandwidth, CPU, … for nothing, it’s not the case here.

    @WebDomainer
    Apparently the old owner had it listed for sale in this marketplace. It’s a classic, people sell names and not update the marketplaces where it was previously listed.
    Anyway all my domains and sites are for sale I did not fall in love of anyone. It’s just offer the right price.

  6. @Francois

    If a “whois stats” feature could be added would be great – apparently this is a tool that Godaddy provides – Hope this is not too much to ask.

    For those who haven’t used it before, that gives a listing of the number of whois’s done on your domains, so I’ve been told as I don’t use Godaddy myself, hence this request.

  7. @Ron
    Yes that’s a good idea.
    But apparently you cannot directly access a trademark search without initiating the search from their site, link becomes expired like the example you provide.
    I will dig to see if there is another way…

    @Rod
    Only the registrar of a domain name can provide this data.
    So unfortunately no way.

    – The button to access DOFO from the Google toolbar while browsing is now up and working fine.

    – A new section “SIMILAR DOMAINS” just added.
    ZFBOT should be listed here with a link to typos, and mny links to domain suggestion tools.

    – Probably a section “DOMAINS FOR SALE” with links to related domains for sale from major marketplaces should be posted.

    If you have more ideas they are welcome, so I can create the best possible tool for the interest of all (I remember it’s a free service).

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