What's the point of doing a lookup of who owns a domain name? Don't you just need to know whether a domain name's available or not? Well, yes and no. If you check for the availability of a domain name you want, and it is available, no problem - click on the "buy" button and it's yours.

But, what happens if the perfect domain name for your business is already taken? Then what? This is where being able to lookup who owns a domain name might come in useful. But, there's more to a domain name lookup than just finding out the owner of the name.

We'll discuss why a domain lookup is important and how you can take advantage of it.

Somebody Stole My Domain Name

Picture this. You've done your due diligence and researched your niche and found a great keyword for your web site and you've decided on a domain name you think is perfect for your new business and web site.

You go to Godaddy or your favorite domain registrar, ready to secure that perfect .com name for your web site, and, lo and behold, somebody already bought it!

But, who? And WHY? Is there any way to find out and perhaps make a deal with them to buy it from them? Is having this particular domain name THAT important to you?

Time To Lookup Who Owns A Domain Name

If the answer to that last question is an emphatic "YES", then you'll be glad to know the answer to the question before that is also an emphatic "YES"! So, what do you need to do to find out who the domain name owner is?

Fortunately, it's pretty simple. Just enter "whois" into your favorite search engine, and one of the top results will be "whois dot (.)net". Select that, and enter the domain name in the "WHOIS Lookup" box to retrieve the owner information of the domain name in question.

If the owner selected a "private" registration, you should at least be able to see the owner's e-mail address and can contact them through that. If the owner has a "public" registration, you'll be able to see all the owner's information, including name, address, phone no., etc.

If you can't get any information about the owner, you can at least get the name of the registrar, whose site you can then go to to get the domain information you need.

Take Over Ownership, Maybe?

You now have the information to approach the owner of the domain name with a view to possibly purchasing said name. But, before you do that, go to the web site and get some idea as to the possible value of the site. If it's a well-developed site with plenty of useful content, chances are it performs well.

However, "eyeballing" the site won't really tell you what it might be worth. There are several factors that need to be considered when evaluating how much a site might be worth, the main ones being:

a) Site age - the older a site is, the more valuable it is perceived to be.

b) Google Page Rank - this is a number from zero to 10 which Google assigns to a web site indicating Google's confidence in the site's content.

c) Alexa Traffic Rank - used to rank sites based on overall number of visitors a site receives; the lower the number, the greater the site's value.

d) Inbound links - the number of inbound links from authority sites greatly adds to the value of a site.

There are other factors that may come into play, but these are the main ones. Use this data to formulate a bid for the domain name you want and first inquire as to whether or not the owner is even willing to consider a bid for the site.

As you can see, you can put the information gleaned from a lookup of who owns a domain name to great use, especially if you want to try to buy a domain name from someone else. Now, if you're not 100% sure whether or not the domain name you're interested in really is the ideal name for your business, there are ways you can determine that, while, at the same time, finding out much more information about domain names and succeeding online in general.