Tricks to Find Domain Owners

I frequently run into the problem of locating domain owners when the Whois information is invalid or outdated. When I want to purchase a domain name, I generally send personal notes to the Whois email address on record – or the historic information if necessary. Oftentimes, I receive the “Delivery Status Notification (Failure)” message that is standard for invalid or inoperable email accounts.

When this happens, I typically call the phone number of the registrant to make contact that way, but I often find that the phone numbers aren’t working either. Depending on the domain name, I will either give up and consider it a lost cause, or I will use a few different ways to get in touch with the owner.

1) Search for the owner’s last name and city on WhitePages.com to find a current phone number. A big DING goes off in my head if the phone number listed is different than the Whois.

2) Search for the owner’s name in Google (in quotes). Oftentimes you will see that the owner is either associated with other companies or email addresses, and you can use those to get in touch.

3) Search for the email address in Google. Sometimes you will find the email address associated with different websites or listed on a particular website along with a more current phone number or alternative means of contact.

4) Search the domain name’s website for info – both the current site and archive.org record. Sometimes the most obvious way of contacting the owner is overlooked.

If all else fails and you need the domain name, you can always visit the last known address. Usually this doesn’t work out, but it is a good way to get information. Sure, most people are reluctant to spend $1k+ on travel and associated expenses to visit a location, but if it can help you buy a $250,000 domain name, why would you give up so easily?

A whole lot of effort went into purchasing Customs.com in September of 2007, and if it wasn’t for going the extra few miles, I would not have been able to acquire it. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort to get in touch with a domain owner, but if it was easy, someone else would have acquired the domain name long ago.

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

10 COMMENTS

  1. Aron here.

    Good of you guys to share some knowledge and tips and tricks for everyone.

    You didn’t have to do that, so I hope it’s appreciated
    by the community.

    Aron

  2. In search marketing, one way to get someone to notice that you’re looking for them is to “call that person” out via a blog post saying that you’re looking for them.

    Google indexes the blog post and the target gets notified via Google Alerts (since most internet savvy people track mentions of their name online).

  3. @Todd

    That is true. That is how I found out about Namepros. Someone questioned one of my domain purchases in one of their forums.

  4. I’ve gone as far as sending letters via snail mail, long shot but if you really want the name you got to try all the options.

    Nice blog Elliot

  5. Elliot – Thank you so much for your dedication to improving the outlook and fortunes of all domain investors/developers. Your site is the first blog I read each day.
    BTW-Is there a way to view your archived posts? Perhaps I am not seeing the link. – Thanks again.

  6. I had similar difficulties trying to get in touch with the owner of a domain I wanted. I ended up finding him on LinkedIn, which enabled me to establish contact and have a dialogue. He decided not to sell the domain, but at least I got a hold of him and could cross it off the list.

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