Here is a little tip and trick that I use for different services to get a "behind the scenes" look at domain name transactions. Today I will talk about the process I use to monitor domain names that are selling at Sedo.com before many people even know about them selling!

What you will need

A DomainTools.com paid membership (specifically: Registrant Alert)

Knowledge of "email" addresses used by specific companies or services

The paid membership that I use at DomainTools.com provides me with 3 "free" registrant alerts that I can follow. (In order to track something, you will first need to obtain the email address of what you wish to track.) You can add on 5 more for $9.95 a month as well but it also depends on the package you have at DT.

How it works

DomainTools.com is the only service that I am aware of that tracks "email addresses" in whois contact information and you can obtain information on domain names based on email addresses. Most companies use the same email address when they register/purchase a domain name, so when you have a "Registrant Alert" set for a specific email address and a new domain is registered, transferred in or out… you get an email about it alerting you. You can also view "history" records in your DT account for email addresses of your registrant alerts.

How to do it

For this example, I am going to use Sedo.com and the email address "transferservice@sedo.com" . OK, why this email address? Since I have used Sedo to sell domain names and I have general knowledge of what takes place when a domain name sells at Sedo, that is the email address used when a domain name sells and is transferred in.

From my knowledge, every domain name that sells at Sedo, has to be transferred into that account and that is the email address used.

By having a "Registrant Alert" set up for that email address, it easily allows me to track what is being transferred into and out (away) from that email address! Sneaky!!!

Once a domain sells and is paid for at Sedo, the seller will transfer the domain name to Sedo for the brokerage part of the transaction. Once this transfer takes place, the email "transferservice@sedo.com" is used in whois. DT notices this change and notifies you via email daily (or when there are changes) of what is positive (came in) and what is negative (what went away from that email address). Here is a screenshot of the email alert:

What to use the info for

If you write a blog like me, this can be "fresh news".

If you are a company that is smart and keeping an eye on what your competitors are doing, you can sneak at there domain registrations.

Investing and sales. Seeing a domain sell, may be similar to one you own. If you own the .com and you see the .net just sold, you have an advantage!

You can really use this data for unlimited things, because your mind is limitless to what angles you look at this kind of data.

How to find email addresses

Again, this is really going to be up to you and your creative mind! What do you want to track etc.

The best way to start, is to do a whois lookup for a domain name that you already know a specific company or service owns. Lets say BarackObama.com, which is owned by the President. Upon doing the whois lookup, you will notice that the "email search" in the whois data is "admin@barackobama.com" . If you wish to track what domain names the President is registering/buying, then you would set a registrant alert for "admin@barackobama.com". Anything that is registered, transferred in or out of that email address will be displayed in your daily registrant alert emails from DT.

Lets say you own Kimberly Clark and you want to keep an eye on what P&G is doing domain wise. Doing a whois look up for PG.com, you would see the email address "piregistrar.im@pg.com". This will allow you to track PG’s domains!

A little limited

With whois privacy, it can limit registrant alert, because email addresses are not displayed when privacy is used. People get sneaky, so if they use an email address that is not as common as the one you think they are using, you will miss those domains. So clearly there are ways around the registrant alert, but not all companies are smart enough to even know about registrant alert, or have the idea that people could track the domains they are buying or selling based on the email address used at the registrar they use!

Final thoughts

Registrant Alert from DomainTools.com is a very powerful tool and can be a huge time saver. The uses are limitless! Case in point, most people wouldn’t think of following the Sedo email address, but creative minds would! There are many email addresses that I follow that would put a smile on your face but I can’t share them all.

I hope this gets your mind thinking! It isn’t a paid post from DomainTools but it would be nice if they gave me a little love! LOL I really enjoy DomainTools and I know I couldn’t do what I do without it!

Let me know if you have any questions, suggestions or if you liked the article. I enjoy comments as it tells me that people are reading and enjoying what I share. If you didn’t like the article, I want to know that as well.

Looking for other ways to spy on company domains? Checkout my DNS method of spying! It’s free just like this article was.

Well, the title says it all! This article is going to be about domain names, just a little bit of different things floating around in my head that I didn’t want to write about in single articles.

Juice.com which is owned by Marksmen (or may be brokered by them, but I’m not sure why whois would change to them if that was the case) was owned by Microsoft from July 2007 until about March 29, 2010 according to whois records when it switched to Marksmen. Marksmen has put the domain into the DomainFest SnapNames/Moniker auction with a reserve of $750K-$1Million. They just set up a "for sale" page on the domain name if you wish to check it out.

Marksmen was also the company that helped Microsoft sell the domain name Do.com to Salesforce Inc. in July 2011. They also helped sell Social.com.

IfTheWorldEnded.com was registered by who? If you thought a gaming company, you would be wrong. GM (General Motors) just registered the domain name. Not sure what they plan on doing with this one, but "if the world ended", you wouldn’t need a General Motors vehicle!

Dominos was very likely the company behind the domain registrations of *uckingDominos.com and *uckingDominoes.com! Yes the * is an F. I’m not sure why companies register these domain names, because there are plenty words that can be used by people if they really want to.

Rayovac batteries ran a promotion awhile back using the domain name RayovacBonus.com, which they put little cards in the packages of batteries with the domain name on it. I wrote about the poor execution of the domain forwarding here, but to top it off, now they let the domain name expire and it was purchased in an expired domain auction at NameJet. The buyer of the domain is now using it for a blog.

Clearly the domain name contains the Rayovac trademark, but also… the domain name will continue to get traffic to it, because those cards are still in A LOT of battery packages! Why they wouldn’t simply register the domain name out for 10 years and continue to get the traffic is beyond me. Now some blog that doesn’t have anything to do with batteries is getting traffic because of the past promotion.

Microsoft, according to whois history records purchased TouchSurface.com and TouchSurface.net from Verisign Inc. Microsoft used Melbourne IT DBS, Inc. to acquire the domain names. They currently forward the domains to a Bing search query for Touchsurface which displays several results for the Microsoft Touch® product they offer.

Hashtags~ I haven’t been seeing that many "new" domain names being used in TV ads or print ads lately. I have been seeing a TON of hashtags being used in the places where domain names normally would have been placed. I’m not much of a Twitter user and I often ask myself the question… how many people in the general public that just figured out what a domain name is, is scratching their head wondering what the hell is #ThisCrazyLookingThing?

For those who really do not use Twitter and have no clue what hashtags are, I often question how wise is it to use only a hashtag in an ad and no domain name at all? What are your thoughts on this as I’m sure you have seen it as well.

Back in November 2011 I shared a very interesting story about turning an $800 offer into a $20,000 domain name sale. The domain name in the story was BattleForEverything.com.

At the time when I was helping Ryan out, I had fully thought that NBC was the interested party in the domain name, because they registered BattleForEverything.net shortly before contacting Ryan, the owner of the .com . It made perfect sense with the recent .net domain registration.

I was wrong! According to whois records which just updated, reveal who the $20,000 buyer was! It was The Coca Cola Company!

I didn’t see that one coming! So it must have been just an odd coincidence that NBC Universal wanted to own BattleForEverything.net days before Coca Cola wanted to own BattleForEverything.com . NBC hand registers the .net and days later Coca Cola uses "Kate Spade" the secret buyer for CSC and purchases the .com for $20K. Pretty crazy!!! (who’s to say that NBC did buy the .com, but Coca Cola wanted it after NBC purchased it? LOL… could be…)

An interesting end to the story, that is for sure! Well, it’s not really the end of the story yet, because we have yet to see what Coca Cola will put on the domain name. Maybe some kind of game? Maybe they will use the domain in the upcoming Super Bowl? Hard to say really, but they are likely planning on doing some thing with it shortly with the whois now displaying them instead of the secret buyer and the DNS change to KO.com, which is the DNS Coke uses.