Five months ago, ICANN launched the new WHOIS website, a one-stop shop for questions and information about everything WHOIS, the Internet’s record system of domain registration data. This new portal was just the first part of ICANN’s goal of implementing substantial improvements to the current system, based on the recommendations outlined in the Action Plan [PDF, 119 KB], a series of recommendations from the WHOIS Policy Review Team on how to move forward with improving WHOIS.
I am excited to announce that the new ICANN WHOIS Lookup tool, a key deliverable under the Action Plan, is now available on the WHOIS website in Beta format. It features a centralized search tool where users can find WHOIS data about any top-level and second-level domains registered on any gTLD under contract with ICANN; even those that have been newly delegated into the root of the DNS.
This new system, which was created as a direct result of the community’s input, is designed to be a user-friendly, educational tool, above all else. Among its features are automatic translation of the data types into the user’s preferred language and a user-friendly, guided experience in performing WHOIS lookup to research domains. The information displayed to users through the search tool is not stored by ICANN, but retrieved by accessing the WHOIS services of registrars and registries through Port 43 in response to a user’s query.
ICANN is committed to continuing to improve the WHOIS Lookup tool and the WHOIS website in general. Your feedback is a critical part of the new lookup tool’s success, so please try it out and send us your feedback at http://whois.icann.org/en/submit-feedback. This is the first time ICANN has provided a comprehensive lookup tool to query WHOIS results, so any and all comments are encouraged.
The new WHOIS website and Lookup tool is just part of how ICANN is implementing the recommendations of the WHOIS Review Team. To find out more about the WHOIS Lookup tool or where other improvements stand, download the Draft Implementation Plan or the latest Implementation Status Chart.