Choosing a name for your online store can be a lot of pressure. Although the process of choosing a name for your business can be fun and inspire creativity, there may be moments that feel overwhelming and tedious – especially when all your ideas seem to have already been taken. You may find that the name you want is available, but the matching domain has already been claimed by someone else.
However, that doesn’t mean you have to start all over again.
Here you will find step-by-step instructions on how to query WHOIS and set up your new domain.
How do you find out who owns a domain?
- Go to the WHOIS database
- Search for the domain URL
- Detect if contact information is private
- Find the contact details of the registrant
1. Go to the WHOIS database
To find out the owner of a domain name, poland email list you can use Shopify’s WHOIS verification tool . In this database, you can find important information such as the domain broker, the current owner, the IP address, and possibly their contact details.
Note: Many domains allow WHOIS information to be publicly available in the database, however some may use additional privacy protections to hide such information from the public.
2. Search for the domain URL
To search for information about a domain, housing rental market trends, growth, and projections 2032 you can simply enter the domain URL into the WHOIS search bar and press the search button.
First, WHOIS displays basic information such as the domain name, ID, domain registrar server and URL, and the creation date. For example, bahrain leads you can see below that shopify.com was created on March 11, 2005 and is currently registered with MarkMonitor .
From this search result, you can also select Show more information to expand the window and see additional WHOIS data about the domain name.
3. Determine whether the contact information is private
Sometimes the WHOIS database acts as an intermediary between you and the domain owner, rather than displaying the owner’s contact information directly in search results. This protects the identity of the domain owner while still giving you enough information to find a way to contact the website owner.
4. Find the contact details of the registrant
If the identity of the domain owner is hidden, you can do a web search to find information about the company that owns the domain. You might find a contact page or an about us page that talks about the company’s leadership, founder, owner, etc. Or you might even find their profile on social media.
If this information is not available, you may be able to find out where the company is registered and search relevant databases that list information about registered companies.
Search the tax authority websites for the relevant location. For example, if a domain belongs to a business registered in Berlin, you can use local databases to search for business ownership by company name, employer identification number, address, phone number, or even the name of the registered agent.
What to do when you find out who owns a domain (in 4 steps)
Once you know who owns a domain you want to purchase, it’s time to figure out how to contact the registrant so you can negotiate a deal to transfer domain ownership.
1. Contact the domain owner
First, you need to contact the domain owner. You might be able to find their contact information using the steps above, often in the form of a physical address. However, if you want to get in touch in a different way, you can take other steps to find the right contact person.
The best place to start is with a Google search. Just type the person’s name into Google to see what comes up. You could also search for “[name] email address” or “[name] contact details.” If that doesn’t produce any results, look at databases like Hunter or LinkedIn.
2. Negotiate a deal to acquire the domain
If you manage to contact the domain owner, you should already have thought about what the deal for the domain might look like. So think about numbers beforehand and be open to a counter offer.
When preparing your offer, you should consider domain authority, which indicates how much search value the existing page has. If the page is obviously outdated and doesn’t appear high in the search engine results page (SERP), you can make a lower offer. For updated pages with a robust digital presence across multiple channels, you should probably start with a higher offer and negotiate from there.
3. Migrate your website to the new domain
When you secure ownership of the domain, you’ll want to migrate your existing website to that domain name. (If you’re starting a website from scratch, skip this step and just start building your website .)
If you build your website on a platform like Shopify, you can migrate to or from almost any online page builder. There are several options for migrating a website to Shopify , and each is a relatively simple process.
