User Guides

Monitors

Overview

The Internet is an intensely dynamic place—the entities you investigate do not remain frozen after an investigation completes. And, outside of the context of an investigation, there are many IP, domain, and registrant-related events that can be important in many different business contexts. Thousands of domains are registered or dropped every day, and it can be challenging to stay informed.

DomainTools monitoring products track these events and send you alerts as soon as changes are detected. With daily alerts, you can stay on top of your investigations and domain management, with the convenience of an automated email direct to your inbox. This service is available to all Personal and Enterprise members, as well as other DomainTools users with paid subscriptions.

The Monitors Configuration Page

The initial landing page for Monitors Revision includes a tab for configuration of each monitor:

Brand Monitor
Registrant Monitor
Name Server Monitor
IP Monitor
Domain Monitor

When you are not logged in, each configuration tab includes a description of the monitor. When you are logged in, each tab displays the configuration UI for that monitor.

The tabs also include a visual indication of what proportion of your allotment of monitors you have used. Hovering your mouse over the tab gives the exact numbers of monitors used and remaining.

Brand Monitor

Whether looking for a new domain for a product or company, protecting an existing brand from infringement, keeping tabs on competition, or watching for trending registration activity tied to specific words or phrases, Brand Monitor can help you discover any new domain registrations that contain your brand or a relevant keyword string, across most TLDs. Set this monitor as a powerful complement to the Trademark Clearinghouse’s service that covers only new TLDs upon first application.

Common Use Cases:

Monitor registration activities on domains containing your brand(s) to catch violations
Spot dropping domains that contain keywords of interest to you
Track trending registrations based on events, persons, or other terms
Monitor your competition for new online holdings, or changes to existing ones, before they are publicly announced

Features:

Monitoring of domains containing specific words, phrases, or partial words
Coverage of all core generic TLDs, all new gTLDs, and many country code (ccTLDs)
Email alerts tell you when domains tied to the monitored terms are registered or dropped
Dashboard displays records of the changes for easy reference

Configuring Brand Monitor

The Brand Monitor configuration UI is arranged as a table in which each row represents a keyword that you wish to monitor. The columns show the rules for matching your keyword, the approximate number of domains that match your keywords, the kinds of activity you are monitoring, and the status (active or inactive) of each monitor.

To add a new term to monitor, click “Add.”

When adding a monitor, you can define rules to help ensure that Brand Monitor finds domains
that are the most directly applicable to your needs. You can enter one or more strings to match.

“Terms that MUST be found” tells Brand Monitor to include one or more terms in the search for matching domains.

For example, entering “Yahoo” will capture all new domains registered with that string anywhere in the domain name. Entering “Goo” and “gle” will capture any domain that has both of those text strings in any location in a domain name, allowing you to capture a domain such as ‘gooooogle.com.’

“Terms that MUST NOT be found” helps filter out domains that are not relevant to you.

For example, if you select “amazon” as a term to match, but your intention is to watch activities of Amazon, Inc., you might wish to ignore any domains that also contain the terms “river” or “rainforest.” Entering those strings as “Terms that MUST NOT be found” filters out irrelevant domains.

Monitoring New or Deleted Domains

You can choose to monitor newly registered domains, deleted domains, or both. For either of these, the matching rules you configured for your terms apply.

Sending Alerts

You can configure Brand Monitor to send you an email alert when it detects new registrations or deletions of domains that match your criteria. If you choose not to receive email alerts, you can still look at recent changes from the Brand Monitor configuration interface.

Viewing Brand Monitor Activity

From the Brand Monitor configuration interface, click Display Alerts History to see a summary view of changes recorded for your monitored terms.

For each day that Brand Monitor detected changes, the interface displays whether those changes were mostly new domains or mostly deleted domains, and clicking the icon for the day provides a detailed view of registration events for that day.

Editing Brand Monitors

You can make quick changes to the individual monitors (“alerts”) you’ve configured by clicking the Edit button. When you are in Edit mode, the Edit button is green. You can then change the status of each keyword row and select/deselect which type of registrations to monitor (New or Deleted domains).

To go back to the normal viewing mode, click the Edit button again.

Registrant Monitor

A powerful way to stay informed about the online activities of an organization, individual, or even a location, is to watch for changes to the monitored registrant information as reflected in the Whois records. A Whois record contains all of the contact information associated with the person, group, or company that registers a particular domain name. Typically, the record will contain information such as the name and contact information of the Registrant (who owns the domain), the name and contact information of the Registrar (the organization or commercial entity that registered the domain name), the registration dates, the name servers, the most recent update date, and the expiration date. Whois records may also provide the administrative and technical contact information (which is often, but not always, the registrant).

Registrant Monitor can be used to track a specific registrant or to alert you to new online holdings before they become active or are publicly announced by parsing through the Whois records of new domain registrations daily and compiling a list of domains that contain the significant term(s) being monitored. This list of matching domains is available via the Registrant Monitor dashboard, where daily email alerts can also be enabled. Use this tool to track a specific registrant or to alert you to new online holdings before they become active or are publicly announced.

Common Use Cases

Keep a close eye on known or suspected malicious organizations or individuals via the domains they register or drop, including malicious or brand-infringing domains operated by serial violators
Observe registration activities connected to a physical location or a phone number– which can help track registrants who supply changing name or contact information
Monitor your competition for new online holdings, or changes to existing ones, before they are publicly announced

Note that Registrant Monitor is NOT recommended for monitoring high-volume registrants such as Privacy or Proxy services.

Features

Monitoring of many different parameters: contact name, registrant name, email address, physical address or address component (such as postal code), phone number, and more
Email alerts tell you when domains tied to the monitored registrant term(s) have changes, including new registrations, changes of ownership, or drops/deletes
Dashboard displays records of the changes for easy reference

Configuring Registrant Monitor

The Registrant Monitor configuration UI is arranged as a table in which each row represents a keyword that you wish to monitor. These keywords can be drawn from any registrant section of a Whois record. The columns show the rules for matching your keyword (s), the status (active or inactive) of each keyword monitor, and a link to see details of any events that Registrant Monitor has previously detected.

To add a new term to monitor, click “Add.”

When adding a monitor, you can define rules to help ensure that Registrant Monitor finds domains that are the most directly applicable to your needs. You can enter one or more strings to match.

“Terms that MUST be found” tells Registrant Monitor to include one or more terms in the search for matching domains.

For example, you can enter whole or partial email addresses, names, postal codes, or telephone numbers. Registrant Monitor will alert on new registrations that include any of your terms.

“Terms that MUST NOT be found” helps filter out domains that are not relevant to you.

For example, if your company shares a large office building with many other companies,
you may wish to monitor your building’s street address, but you may wish to enter your
own company’s name as an exclusion, so that Registrant Monitor will only alert on
registrations of other companies in your building.