This morning I came across a discussion, in relation to Where 2.0, a mapping conference.
To that end, Garrett Rogers speculates, based on domain name registrations, that Google will be announcing a “street view”? mapping capability at the show.
Over the years, in the domain business, we used to monitor what our competitors were up to. Learned allot of information, things to do, things to avoid. Domain registration knowledge isn’t going to make or break your business, but at times it will give you an extra information your competitor is underestimating, a truly unique opportunity to gain an unfair advantage.
How to monitor your competitors domain registrations?
1. Find out their DNS where they host their domain names. If it is public you are out of luck. If DNS is private then continue to step 2.
2. Monitor DNS daily
3. Compare day by day to see what’s being added
Or, for those who rather use a service rather then do it manually, DomainTools has a section on their site called “Name Server Spy“. In their own words:
What is Name Server Spy?
Name Server Spy is Domain Tools new, powerful name server monitoring technology that lets you monitor the daily activity of .com, .net, .org, .biz, .us, and .info domains on any name server under 50,000 domains.
Monitors come to you by a daily email with a list of changes for the previous day. You can adjust when emails are sent and what data it contains.
It won’t work at all times as sometimes domain registrations are private, or DNS points to a public and busy servers, but with zero or tiny costs invovled and a little time to set up, it’s definitely worth a shot.
Sahar - what is the method for monitoring someone’s DNS manually without using Domain Tools?
—-ANSWER—-
Having access to the zone file and compare daily changes to a particular DNS