I know a .com domain name, and can look up registration information
for it using VeriSign's whois web page. Now, given that information, I
would like to find outher websites that the person or company has
registered. I guess what I really want is a general method for
querying whois name data. It should be available as a web service, or
runnable on a Windows OS.

I recall being able to do this a couple fo years ago, do a general
text search on whois records, but now can't find a suitable web
resource to do this.

Hi rwmccauley!


That is a very interesting question and it would certainly be a very
useful tool for tracking "cybersquatters".

Initial searches on Google such as "domain name registrant search" and
"search domain by registrant" proved to be vague and returned
thousands of results.
From my own Internet-related knowledge, I know that providing your
personal details on certain "Whois" lookups has now been made optional
if you are not a business.
The document [ http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/whois.html ], by the
United Kingdom naming authority Nominet, explains this in a little
more detail.

However, the Google search query "dns registrant search" gave me one
result which was a real breakthrough.
If you visit the following URL and scroll down to the ninth result,
you will find a very large document by the highly respected Verisign
company.
[ ://www.google.co.uk/search?q=dns+registrant+search&num=20&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&start=100&sa=N
]

One section of this (Part 3.4.2) contains the quote: "The service MUST
provide the capability of searching for registrants by name or a
reasonable name subset. The service MUST provide a mechanism to
distribute this search across all applicable domain registries and
registrars..."
This document appears to be a set of guidelines for a "work in
progress" internet domain name directory.

I was very curious about this, I am aware of a project by Google
called "Google Labs" [ http://labs.google.com ] in which you can test
new experiments by the research team.
Luckily Verisign do have a similar venture: [
http://www.verisignlabs.com ], where I found the link to a search
engine called the "LDAP Service": [ http://www.ldap.verisignlabs.com
].
If you click on the "Search for Organization" link on the left, you
will get a simple search box.
Typing several different company names into this gave fantastic
results.
For example, I tried entering: Microsoft, Yahoo, NTL, BBC and many
other American and British companies; I could then view a large list
of domain names which the companies own.

There appears to be a way of using this technology on your own web
server via Javascript, if you click on the "Graphical clients" link,
you can see many downloads which include Windows programs. You can
even tweak the technology to your own needs because they also include
the full source code in several formats.
Normally, I would end the answer here, but the service I found by
Verisign Labs is an experiment and therefore may not be available
forever.

So, in addition I also located an alternative "paid" service by the
huge Thomson [ http://www.thomson-thomson.com ] research group.

They operate something called "SAEGIS", which is basically an advanced
online database tool; the URL for the service you require is: [
http://ttdomino.thomson-thomson.com/www/NewProducts.nsf/ALPHA/CEA045C57BEE6E4785256B3A005E1554?OpenDocument
].
However, you can only register for the service by visiting: [
http://ttdomino.thomson-thomson.com/www/clientln.nsf/AGREEMENT?OpenForm
].
Although expensive, it may be useful as a backup service to you.

The only other resource which I could find was by the British Nominet
entity which may be linked in some way to the Verisign document I
mentioned earlier.
These have a document [
http://www.nominet.org.uk/ref/expanded-whois.html ] on their Web site
which explains the need for a registrant search and they are planning
to implement this service in December 2002 which is great news.


Related Google searches:

"domain name registrant search"
[ ://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=domain+name+registrant+search&meta=
]

"search domain by registrant"
[ ://www.google.co.uk/search?num=20&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&safe=off&q=search+domain+by+registrant&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
]

"domain name change in rules registrant details"
[ ://www.google.co.uk/search?q=domain+name+change+in+rules+registrant+details&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&meta=
]


Thanks for the fantastic question!

regards,
errol-ga.

Errol,

Nice! Just what I needed. I was able to use the VeriSign Labs LDAP
Whois service to find a cluster of web sites for my investigation,
then use my knowledge of the names and TLDs this person might use to
findd a second cluster (they were grouped under organizations with the
effective identities of "John Smith" and "Smith,John"). If that link
closes down, I'll follow up on the other resoruces. Beautifully
complete answer.

I'll just note that historically, the old monolithic registry provided
ways to do lookups by name field and other text searches. Also, tools
like the "whois" in Matthew Schneider's net.demon supported these
kinds of queries. But they haven't yet caught up to the new structure
of the Net.

I've spent the last hour or two playing with both the VeriSIgn Labs
and the Google Labs sites, and it's taken me this long to tear away
and rate your answer!

Thanks,
Raymond

Once upon a time Verisign / Network Solutions was the only place you
could buy a .com from. Their original WHOIS included commands with
which you could search on any part of their database, including
people/companies.

Now there are registrars everywhere, and this is the first place in a
long time that I have seen that allows this type of search. Well done
errol-ga for finding it. It is not a complete solution, but certainly
appears to be all there is at present. From some of the wording, it
appears that Verisign would like to include the data from every
registrar one day.