Media Level Access: How Whoisology is Now at the Service of Journalism
Journalists and influencers researching or forecasting about the internet need to analyze various data-sets for their articles. Getting access to reliable data, in time (and more often than not, with their really short deadlines), can be quite cumbersome. In order to help these professionals, be it publications (print and online), news organizations, influencers, or industry expert blog writers, we now provide Media Level Access, which can help them in researching or substantiating their stories with our factual data.
Our service is based on WHOIS Database Download and Whoisology Advanced Search, which allows refining data at a granular level. With the power of these tools combined, it becomes easy to track website domains, monitor their evolution and ownership over time, and understand their connections with other domains.
As such, this comprehensive solution is useful in providing details about a particular entity as well as presenting a wealth of newsworthy insights about potentially malicious online activities. Incidentally, there should be plenty of them for journalists to discover. In fact, by the first quarter of 2018, it was found that 11,135 domains had already been used for phishing.
In this article, we are talking about how Whoisology enables media professionals to expand their research methods and its specific use cases.
What’s beneath WHOIS Database Download?
Our WHOIS database is a crucial source of key data points regarding domains. Journalists can find useful information from it — approximately 317 million active domain names, 5 billion historical WHOIS records, and 2,850 TLDs and ccTLDs. The data is organized and parsed in a consistent format for easy integration into journalists’ research processes.
What Makes Whoisology Advanced Search an Essential Companion?
Domain name search is not just about quantity, though. It’s also important for navigating across these millions of entries to find hidden scoops. Through its multiple filters — such as specific date ranges, info on administrators, contact details, given keywords, etc. — for various journalistic use cases, Whoisology Advanced Search permits finding what matters through alternative sources before others do.
4 Use Cases for Media Professionals
Monitoring Brands and Trademarks
Overseeing a domain’s brand-related activities and monitoring certain companies or individuals could be useful for journalists. For example, domain names that bear very close similarities to that of established companies is a good background to a story, especially for professionals in charge of investigating possible copyright infringement.
Media Level Access can also help foresee if a brand is planning to add a website to their extending line of products or services. Additionally, since the monitoring can also be focused on a keyword, journalists can concentrate on an industry or even a niche.
Conducting Bulk Searches
Searching domains in bulk could prove crucial for various research processes. For example, a domain can be compared with multiple other sites using the proven reliability of WHOIS records while saving a lot of time since users do not need to run the analysis one by one.
There are more ways bulk searches can be relevant, notably, for a media company’s own business use when needing to check all major rivals during a prolonged period; or a practitioner’s personal branding efforts willing to ensure that his or her name remains differentiated in the industry; or for gathering information to produce a story from various angles.
Looking at Specific Domains
What’s more, Media Level Access and Whoisology Advanced Search are practical instruments for those media professionals who want to stay updated on an individual or an organization they have been eyeing discreetly.
Domain registrant’s details like name, telephone number, email, and address can be the starting point for researching a target domain owner. Activities of a particular registrant such as the addition or removal of domains and other important information are regularly updated and become available firsthand.
Specific details about a target registrant can be queried to see what other sites someone might own or have owned and when. If that person is the holder of closely related names or is providing inconsistent information on, let’s say, emails or websites, this may reflect malicious intentions.
Monitoring Domain Availability
Has a company given up on an existing product line? Is it ceasing operations? Has an M&A deal been completed? Is there a new market entrant to watch out for? Media practitioners can be the first to find out by looking at the availability and changes of ownership of certain domains, or simply confirming the existence and nature of any domain.
The world of domain names and its many connections is a rich source of information that journalists can find invaluable to create engaging stories. If you are a media professional looking for materials in the digital space, then contact us to learn more about our Media Level Access, WHOIS Database Download, and Whoisology Advanced Search services.