About This Site

On 17 May 2018 the ICANN Board adopted a Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data. This page is under review and will be updated to address the Temporary Specification.

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

You are here

Phase I - Informational Website (Complete)

Phase II - WHOIS Look-up (Complete)

Phase III - Statistical Analysis (Complete)

About WHOIS