Screaming Cow

The SEO crawler that won't stay quiet about your site's problems.

What does the registry say about this domain?

Registrar, when it was registered and when that lapses, nameservers and status -- from the registry over RDAP, the structured replacement for WHOIS.

What this checks

It asks the registry about a domain and returns what the registry says: the registrar, the registration date, the expiry date, the name servers and the status codes.

It asks over RDAP, the protocol that replaces the old WHOIS. Same information, in a structured format rather than the free text every registry used to write its own way.

Why it matters for SEO

  • Expiry. A domain that lapses takes the whole site with it, and everything it cost to rank. It is the most expensive and most avoidable failure there is.
  • Status codes. A clientHold means the domain is pulled from the zone: it resolves for nobody, however healthy the server is.
  • Before buying a domain. The registration date and the history tell you whether you are inheriting something with a past.
An old domain does not rank better

It is one of the most persistent beliefs in the industry and Google has denied it explicitly: domain age is not a ranking factor. What does correlate is that a site with years behind it usually has more content and more links, and those are what count. The date itself does nothing.

Common questions

My country-code domain returns nothing. That is normal. Many country registries do not publish RDAP at all, or publish it with the data cut back. It is not a failure of the lookup.

Why is the owner missing? Since the GDPR, registries redact the registrant's personal details. What is left is the administrative part, which is the part that is useful here.

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