I'm looking for some suggestions on free data mining alternatives to services like domaintools.com. For example, http://domaintools.com/sld.tld (where sld.tld is a typical domain name, probably currently registered, through some registrar. I'm particularly interested in retrieving historic registrar, registrant, DNS, and other records, much like the example URL above would produce at domaintools.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated

Terminal >
what is a "historic registrar"?

My contract w/ARIN, for example, provides me with on the fly historical records there, and if you look at the link I provided (substituting an actual domain name that is registered), it will return the current records from the port 43 WHOIS server at the current registrar or registry, and optionally, with a subscription, the previous records including the historic registrants, historic registrars, etc.

Check it out and you'll see for yourself

Thanks for the blurb.
I worked Tech Support for numerous ISPs and never knew such an option existed, and I guess I can't think of any reason why I'd need "historic registrar" info. but oh, well.

I have always used http://www.intodns.com/ myself.

The typical tech support issues that an ISP would be interested in resolving problems for certainly wouldn't entail any historic research.

Software that produces results along the lines of the link above would also be appreciated. I've hobbled together some tools with functionality that produces much of the output that site produces already, but the historical records are still eluding me.

The point is that I don't want to rely upon someone elses site or external resources, bur rather, my own.

Any thoughts, suggestions?

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Interesting to see such a non-answer ;-p

As far as I'm aware the only ones interested in historical domain name registration data would be those that make money off of it via litigation or speculation...


Check WHOIS RFCs / ICANN nfo to find out if historical data is a mandatory part of the data that must be publicized for free. You know the answer from just reading that sentence ;p-

I guess the best thing to do is just pay for the subscribtion to their database and have access to the records they have.