Enhancing Business Insights with WHOIS

WHOIS maintains a database of IP addresses and domain names for organizations registered with its service. The listings include the range of IP addresses in a domain, domain owner contact information and the domain expiration date. Although you can perform a WHOIS database download of certain information, such data is likely to be incomplete or outdated, due to which a WHOIS database download is not recommended.

Agency Contact Information in WHOIS

Performing a WHOIS lookup will yield agency contact information that may not always be up-to-date. Individuals who are listed as agency contacts will not necessarily be directly in charge of a particular department and may have no authority over its operations. Obtaining relevant agency contact information might require that you perform multiple searches over time.

What WHOIS IP Addresses Mean

The IP addresses that are affiliated with an agency's network are often not co-located with the company office. Due to security concerns, contacting the network administrator directly is seldom the most efficient approach. If you need to speak with a company representative directly, you might need to consult additional sources to locate the name of the employee who can best address your question.

Cross-Referencing a WHOIS Lookup

If your WHOIS search fails to yield results, it does not mean that the business is non-existent or that you have encountered a scam. You can use additional online databases and meta-engines to locate the name of a company contact who can provide pertinent information about the business and its activities.

Using Regional Internet Registries to Locate Company Information

Each continent has a central authority that administers internet addresses within that region. The Regional Internet Registries listed below often contain entries that are not available in WHOIS.

• ARIN: ARIN administers internet domains in Canada, the United States and some Caribbean countries.
• LACNIC: A similar website for companies registered in Latin America and some Caribbean islands is LACNIC, which is located in Montevideo, Uruguay.
• APNIC: To locate information about internet addresses in the Asia Pacific region, you can visit the APNIC website.
• RIPE NCC: RIPE NCC administers internet domains for registrants in Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia.
• AFRINIC: AFRINIC is the comparable administrative entity on the African continent and is located in the Republic of Mauritius.

Benefits for Businesses

The WHOIS database benefits for businesses include operations management for business owners. Like all systems that are operated primarily by humans, WHOIS is far from error free. Information obtained from electronic sources is not always current, not necessarily accurate and generally not exhaustive. Learning to effectively use databases such as WHOIS takes practice, as does learning to interpret the results require experience.

Having comprehensive, timely and accurate information is the only way to ensure that your business plan is built on solid ground. When used in conjunction with other electronic repositories, a WHOIS lookup or download can be a valuable resource for various professionals to use in fields such as strategic planning, risk mitigation and business development.