WhoIsHostingThis.com FAQ

Here’s where you will find answers to some of our most frequently asked questions.

Our Hosting Lookup Tool

These questions relate to our Host Lookup Tool. The process of determining a site’s host is not as simple as it may seem.

Why is knowing a site’s host important?

Knowing the real web host of a particular website is useful in all sorts of situations. For example:

1. Competitive intelligence: knowing who hosts your competitors’ sites may help you understand their web strategy.
2. Research: if you’re considering a new host, it can be useful to find out the hosts behind similar sites to yours.
3. Stopping content theft: knowing the host of a website that’s stolen your content is the first step in filing a DMCA complaint.
4. Dealing with malicious behavior: most hosts take a dim view of comment spammers, DDoS attacks, malware, etc. So reporting the site will often get the badly behaved booted off their host.

Are your results 100% accurate?

No. Unfortunately, there’s no way to provide 100% accurate results. However, we use several data sources to find out who is hosting a website, which makes us more accurate and reliable than other similar services. If you find a bad result, you can help us by reporting it for investigation.

What if I think these results are wrong?

It’s possible. We’re as sorry as you that there’s no way to provide 100% accurate results. Here are a couple of ideas for further action:

1. Many providers resell hosting or rent rackspace from larger hosting companies. So our results may sometimes show the IP range owner (ie, the larger host), rather than the reseller. We do try to identify both companies where possible.
2. Try hitting the “refresh data” link. If this site has moved hosts recently, our results may still show the old host.

This domain appears to be self-hosted; what gives?

The company responsible has their own IP range. Some common examples are Amazon and eBay. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide detailed information about their hosting setups.

Why does your tool not recognize my domain?

That’s very unusual and usually only happens with domains that haven’t been renewed. Please check that the domain still exists. If the problem remains, contact us.

Why does the Host Lookup Tool say my domain is, “Hosted by The Planet”?

Many budget hosts — including big players, like HostGator — rent their servers from The Planet.

We’re usually able to ID resellers by either their nameservers or IP range. Unfortunately, no technique is 100% reliable.

That means that you may see some sites identified as hosted by The Planet — the datacenter — when the host the site owner uses is really a retail hosting company, like HostGator.

Why use your tool instead of others?

The simple answer is: we’re right more often than our competitors. Unlike tools like Netcraft and DomainTools, we use multiple data sources to answer your queries. That means, when it comes to the question, “Who hosts this website?” we’re much more likely to give you the correct answer.

Let’s look at a quick example. Search for the domain HostGator.com on a service like DomainTools or Netcraft, and you’ll be told that the site is hosted by The Planet. That’s wrong.

HostGator is a web host so, obviously, they host themselves. The confusion comes because they rent space in The Planet’s datacenter.

Try the same search on WhoIsHostingThis and you’ll get a proper answer: Hostgator host Hostgator.com. We use multiple sources of information to make sure we get the answer right more often than our competitors.

DMCA

One of the most common uses of our Host Lookup Tool is to get your copyrighted material taken down from unauthorized sites.

How can I file a DMCA takedown notice?

DMCA stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. A DMCA notice is a tool for removing content that is copyrighted from a website or search engine results page.

Although you can file a DMCA yourself, it can be complex and time consuming. We offer a DMCA notice service, which includes research, filing the notice, monitoring the situation, and a preservation of the evidence trail.

Someone’s stolen my content: can you help?

Yes. See our DMCA takedown service.

General

Here are the answers to a few random questions.

Who’s behind this website?

WhoIsHostingThis is run by a crack team of developers, designers, researchers, and writers. You can read more about the people us on our Meet the Team page.

How do I know I can trust your hosting reviews?

We know there are a lot of crooked review sites about. Rather than try to answer in a couple of lines, we’ve explained why our hosting reviews are different here:

• Our Reviews Are Different…
• Meet The Team
• Full Disclosure

Can I advertise with you?

Yes! We’d love to hear from you. Contact us to discuss your requirements.

Any Questions?

Please feel free to contact us if you have any other questions.