How to check if a domain is "alive" or "parked" from command line?
You could just use python to read in the html content and then search for "domain available"/"parked"/"renewal" etc and other keywords. You can feed it a CSV file of domains and then output the results as CSV and there you have a list of domains.
The other idea would be to parse whois records using something like this and parse the results for the renewal date. That's how I'd do it.
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Vi.
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Vi. over 1 year
If some domain name becomes stale, it usually still replies to HTTP requests with some bunches of useless links, sometimes even without an explicit "This domain is expired/for sale" message instead of just failing to resolve at all.
How to automatically determine the "dead" (expired/not prolonged) domain without a browser? Can it be done with
whois
tool?Expecting something like this:
while true; do if ! checkdomain something-on-verge-of-abandoning-business.com; then echo "Good night, sweet prince" break fi sleep 1d done
For example, let's look at domain
allmydata.com
. As far as I see about Allmydata, there should be some Tahoe-LAFS-based backup service there. But actually it is parked domain.$ whois allmydata.com ... Domain Name: ALLMYDATA.COM Registrar: DOMAIN MONKEYS, LLC Whois Server: whois.domainmonkeys.com Referral URL: http://www.domainmonkeys.com Name Server: NS1.DSREDIRECTION.COM Name Server: NS2.DSREDIRECTION.COM Status: clientTransferProhibited Updated Date: 04-aug-2013 Creation Date: 03-aug-2004 Expiration Date: 03-aug-2014 ... $ dig +short -t A allmydata.com @8.8.8.8 208.73.211.247
This shallow check shows like it is were a good domain. But how to reliably (i.e. not heuristically parsing the page and measuring "spammy-ness" or "parked-ness" from content) detect such thing?
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Thalys over 10 yearslinux I assume?
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Vi. over 10 yearsFor example, GNU/Linux. But I expect the approach to be portable.
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Vi. over 10 yearsThis looks like a workaroundish "heuristic" method... What is the essential technical difference between normal and "dead" domain?
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Mud over 10 yearsWell a dead domain will have no valid nameserver or A records - you could just dig for those and use that as a test/fail thing, otherwise I'm out of ideas. Personally I would just query whois records and parse the results for the renewal date - any date that <= today would be a dead domain
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Vi. over 10 yearsAppended a domain example that satisfies "expire date > today", but yet still a parked domain.