Determining Who Hosts A Website

Often we need to find out not only who a domain name belongs to but also who is hosting that particular domain’s website. Luckily there is the whois lookup which polls a database containing information relating to a particular domain name. This information lists the domain owner and the name servers which can lead to who is hosting it. Sometimes a little more digging is required, but usually from this information it is possible to tell where the website is being hosted.

First lets find a free online whois service so we can look up some information on a domain. If you google “online whois” you will get a number of results. This particulat website works fine: http://whois.domaintools.com - Simply type in the domain name you want to find the web host of and hit LOOKUP. You should see a whole list of information about the domain. If you scroll down a ways there is a section called, Registry Data. Here is usually a list of the name servers, often times it is only 2 but it can be more. They are usually listed something like: ns1.domainname.com and so on… Often the domain name of the name server is also the domain of the registry. You can try typing in www instead of the ns1, ns2, etc, and then the name server domain name. If it takes you to a web hosts website then you’ve found it!

Sometimes web hosts will use a different domain name for their name servers. In this case repeat the whois lookup but this time use the name server domain name. This will tell you who owns the name servers. A quick Google search for the company or registrant of the name server domain name will reveal the web host.

Both of these methods are by no means perfect but often provide good results. Sometimes domain names are registered with privacy protection in which case you can see very little about the registrant and it bring your search for who hosts a particular website to a dead end.