How to look up a Domains WHOIS information

When maintaining a domain name, sometimes the domain registrar and domain information needs to be retrieved. To retrieve the information of your domain, you will need to look up the WHOIS information. This can be done several ways. When looking up your WHOIS information , the information provided looks like the following (google.com was used for the WHOIS lookup):

Example of WHOIS lookup

Registrant:
        Dns Admin
        Google Inc.
        Please contact contact-admin@google.com 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
         Mountain View CA 94043
        US
        dns-admin@google.com +1.6502530000 Fax: +1.6506188571
    Domain Name: google.com
        Registrar Name: Markmonitor.com
        Registrar Whois: whois.markmonitor.com
        Registrar Homepage: http://www.markmonitor.com
    Administrative Contact:
        DNS Admin
        Google Inc.
        1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
         Mountain View CA 94043
        US
        dns-admin@google.com +1.6506234000 Fax: +1.6506188571
    Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
        DNS Admin
        Google Inc.
        2400 E. Bayshore Pkwy
         Mountain View CA 94043
        US
        dns-admin@google.com +1.6503300100 Fax: +1.6506181499
    Created on..............: 1997-09-15.
    Expires on..............: 2020-09-13.
    Record last updated on..: 2012-01-29.
    Domain servers in listed order:
    ns2.google.com
    ns4.google.com
    ns1.google.com
    ns3.google.com

The previous look up is basically how all domains are displayed when you look them up.

What is WHOIS

The WHOIS (pronounced "Who Is") of a domain is the publicly displayed information about a domains ownership, billing, technical, administrative, and nameserver information. Running a WHOIS on your domain will look thedomain up at the registrar for the domain information. All domains have WHOIS information.

For domains registered at InMotion, you can view your WHOIS information through your AMP. For information on viewing your domain WHOIS at InMotion please see our article on How to change your domain's WHOIS information in AMP. The below sections will explain how to look up your WHOIS by using the Linux command line and using domaintools.com.

Looking up WHOIS through domaintools.com

You can look up the WHOIS information on your domain be visiting the following free link.

http://www.whois.sc/

When you search your domain in their search you will have the information display for your domain. Please see the image to the right.

Using the WHOIS command in the Linux command line

1. Open up your SSH client.
2. On the command prompt, type the following command. (Supplement your-domain.com with the domain you want to look up.)

   whois youir-domain.com

3. You will see the information about the domain on the screen. Please see the graphic to the right. The WHOIS information should look like the image to the right. (google.com was used in this example)