Whois is an extremely useful tool and is provided in various forms from a lot of different services. Each service offers a variety of information with a whois query, but just keep in mind that the data you are seeing is not always “real time”!
This can be very frustrating and the source to see the most accurate data is directly from the registry of the extension (TLD).
Real life example
The domain name CIN.com had recently sold and I stopped in at the ever popular DomainTools.com whois and this is what the data shows:
This is a “partial screenshot” as the registrants full details were listed below the above data but you can see the whois update as today. In no place did it mention that the above data was “cached”, but if it did, near the bottom would be a yellow box stating so, although the above is really cached because the data is not accurate. It is just the name servers that are not correct, but it’s still not accurate.
Checking at the registry since the domain is a “.com” (Verisign for .com /.net) you will notice different and accurate results:
The only difference in this case, was the Name Servers were changed and different between the two services. Not a huge deal, well depending on why you were looking at the whois really.
DomainTools.com whois displays a ton of information, which is simply great, but it’s also nice if it was real time. They handle so much data, I’m sure it’s very hard to be real time with each whois request they get but it’s still nice knowing you are seeing the very latest data.
I did the whois searches almost instantly together, so they were accurate as I could make them.
Now, you will notice the registry doesn’t display the “name” or “email” “address” etc of the owner of the domain… that is because the registry does not handle that data, as that is up to the registrar.
In General
It depends what the reason behind your whois search is, where the best place to perform your query. If for example, you were checking simply to see if a domain name is “available”, I would check at the registry! They will have the real time data you are looking for! Registrars “play games” and also do not always have real time whois. If you play the drop game, you really want to use the registry and a registrar with real time whois. If the registrar is not real time, they will show a recently released domain (expired/released from registry) as “taken” when the domain can be really “available”. I wish I could list all the registrars that are “real time” but I assume most big registrars are now (this was not always the case).
In most cases, doing a whois search using whois.domaintools.com will result in the accurate whois data you are looking for. If you use the registry and see what registrar the domain you are looking into is registered at, it isn’t a bad idea to use that registrar’s whois as displayed (whois.godaddy.com) for an example to see registrant data not shown by the registry. This should be accurate and up to date.
Whois Providers
Who.is (free whois history, which is not great but not bad. Only shows (1) history record if they have it)
Whoisology.com (free registrant email search (not live, but an expensive option at DT)
That’s correct!
I have seen many times where the WHOIS at DT isn’t real time. So need to confirm at different places. I also use a software which is far more helpful than these WHOIS look up sites.
Abdul, can you share what you use? If not, are you able to share at least why it is far more helpful?
It’s Domain Name Analyzer Pro for which I have written a post in past which might be helpful in some way – http://www.abdulbasit.com/domaining/use-domain-name-analyzer-professional-for-bulk-whois-domain-generator-and-much-more
Thanks Abdul! I will check it out.
since a few months i been using the WHOIS tool at ICANN , saves me alot time when checking all these new gTLDs.
http://whois.icann.org/
After the last redesign of DomainTools Whois I started looking for alternative. The old design was way better.
I came across https://who.is and it has a feature that I’m sure you will like, Jamie. It will tell you at the top of the page when is the last time the whois record was updated and it gives you an option to update instantly as well. You may will not like the couple of promotion boxes at the top of whois like me but I’m trying to live with it until I find a better alternative.