In early February, Ron Jackson reported that Screenshots.com had sold for $32,500. The third largest deal of the week was completed by Eric Rice, and the buyer was DomainTools (as Mike Berkens noted a while back). The company has been offering historical screenshots of websites via its Whois lookup page. For instance, you can see the old format here.
A press release went out this morning announcing that DomainTools is now using Screenshots.com to display historic website screenshots. The new website is free to use for any visitor, and anyone can view or download the screenshots. You do not need a DomainTools account to use Screenshots.com.
This is a standalone website, and like other DomainTools’ websites, it provides much more information than just screenshots. For instance, when you search a website, Screenshots.com lists the # of domain names owned by the registrant of that domain name as well as the # of domain names on the same nameservers. It’s a handy new site, and I can imagine a whole host of uses for it.
Press release below:
DomainTools, the recognized leader in domain name research and monitoring, today launched Screenshots.com, a website that allows users to view screenshots of what a website looks like now and throughout its history. Screenshots.com provides a web archive of images and data sets that can be used for discovering and evaluating the history of website homepages. Users can track, and more fully understand, how a website’s homepage content has changed in its lifetime.
DomainTools has rebuilt the thumbnail engine that for years has provided a visual context to the powerful domain name detail information available at DomainTools.com. By launching on the premium domain name Screenshots.com, DomainTools is able to feature this important content in a more functional way for users that are specifically interested in home page archives.
Screenshots.com was created with key features in mind to help users better research competitive websites, easily scroll through a website’s image history, and discover details about the website. Visitors can quickly uncover the year the domain was first registered, find similar type websites and learn how a website looked over time. The site includes the ability for users to request an updated screenshot at any time. The Featured Screenshot section on the home page scans news feeds for domain name references and showcases them on a rotating basis.
The DomainTools thumbnail image capture system, the back-end service for Screenshots.com, was originally developed in 2004. The current version now checks up to 1,000,000 websites a day and, unlike other screenshot services, captures critical external resources like ads and images. With Screenshots.com, what you see is exactly what a visitor would have seen when they visited the site. Domain investors, trademark attorneys and brand agents alike have relied upon DomainTools’ screenshot history tool to make more informed business decisions and to investigate and defend potential trademark-infringing domain names.
For nearly 10 years, DomainTools has provided users with the most comprehensive data about domain names, and the launch of Screenshots.com helps extend that mission. Together with DomainTools.com, DailyChanges.com, ReverseWhois.com, and Reversemx.com, individuals, small business owners, and many large enterprises use DomainTools’ breadth of tools to do everything from finding a good domain for a new business to verifying DNS and WHOIS information on corporate portfolios of thousands of domains.
About DomainTools
DomainTools is the recognized leader in domain name research and monitoring. Like the white pages of the Internet, DomainTools provides a directory that serves a comprehensive snapshot of past and present domain name registration and ownership records in addition to powerful research tools that help to uncover and discover everything there is to know about a domain name. DomainTools is a Top 200 site in the Alexa rankings. DomainTools is based in Seattle, Washington.
Nice Post. Thanks for update.
Yea and these domain tools guys scan my servers without requesting robots.txt access even once! They suck bandwidth down like a drunk sailor on leave in a bar costing me and others lots of money. They are permantly banned from my servers and others too. Dont believe me? Check here:
http://www.projecthoneypot.org/ip_66.249.16.211
Domain tools people are bunch of idiots. They just grab other sites screenshots and host it on screenshots.com and when you contact them to remove the images of your design they will deny and give an copy paste answer like anything for public view can be copied and they are not copying functions and if we want to remove then we must get an court order!!!
I find this people really idiots and trying to make money by just copying others designs and sites and hosting them!!!! They should remove if the site owner complaints about it. I wish the site gets off soon!!! and if I get chance to screw this people then ill do it!!! Several of my designs are now hosted by them and copied by several people!!!