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About This Site

This website was inspired by the recommendations of the first WHOIS Review Team that encouraged ICANN to undertake a series of improvements to its current implementation of WHOIS services. One of these recommendations called upon ICANN to raise awareness of the service, and to improve its user-friendliness.

Phase I - Informational Website (Complete)

Phase I of this website is dedicated to providing comprehensive information to consumers of WHOIS related to various aspects of WHOIS. Subsequent phases provide additional functionality to simplify the consumer experience, and to report upon improvements to the quality of WHOIS data.

Phase I includes the following content:

  • About WHOIS: What is WHOIS, historical context, and technical articles
  • Policies: Current policies and obligations for domain name registrants, registries and registrars
  • Get Involved: Mechanisms and background on how to get involved with groups that work on WHOIS policy development
  • Improving WHOIS: Features to file complaints to ICANN organization on inaccuracies and services unavailable, as well as background on ICANN organization's processes for handling complaints
  • Knowledge Center: Centralized repository of WHOIS related content and Q/As

Phase II - WHOIS Look-up (Complete)

  • Lookup: WHOIS look-up capability for all gTLDs contracted with ICANN

Phase III - Statistical Analysis (Complete)

  • Improving WHOIS: Statistical analysis of WHOIS accuracy

Last Updated: July 2017

About WHOIS