A poor man's domain monitoring?

[Edwin]

I was idly musing whether a tool like http://www.watchthatpage.com/ (there are many other similar free services that monitor changes in a particular URL) could be used to keep a gentle eye on a particular domain name that's of interest to you.

Of course, since it only checks for updates on a daily basis, it's not even worth thinking about for drop catching, but I was imagining cases where there's a name that's tangential to one you already own for a project, for example.

If you set it up to monitor a Nominet Whois results URL like
http://www.nominet.org.uk/whois/lookup?query=example.co.uk

then in theory you should receive an email alert if and only if something changes in that Whois record (domain gets renewed, suspended, change of ownership, etc.) and the rest of the time you'll hear nothing at all.

 

[DaveP]

http://www.domaintools.com/monitor/

 

[Edwin]

http://www.domaintools.com/monitor/

Looks very good (and certainly more "fit for purpose" than my cobbled together idea) but it's also $49/month after the free trial vs free.

 

[DaveP]

Looks very good (and certainly more "fit for purpose" than my cobbled together idea) but it's also $49/month after the free trial vs free.

I could build something like this for .uk domains at first but I really can't see it being much in demand, would almost feel a waste of time, I mean if it's one just or two domains you want to monitor a whois lookup that takes a few seconds wouldn't hurt? Or am I being blind here?

 

[grantw]

Looks like this updated version of watchmydomains does email alerts Edwin:

http://watchmy.domains/winbiz/

If you want free, I've been using this for years to monitor other stuff:

http://www.cmcode.co.uk/webmon/

You can select the part of the html you want to monitor on the page if you wish. It shows a popup and plays a sound when the page changes. It may be possible to get it to send an email using the 'run command' alert option, never used that myself though.

Grant

 

[mspecialists]

You can use the watch_domains feauture of SSD (search_short_domains) since it works for any-length domains.

You only would have to make a scan as long the domain is not in pendingDelete state. This can be done manually as often you like or you can automatize it with some script.

When a domain gets in redemptionPeriod / pendingDelete state it is not available jet but watch_domains will monitor it as often you want (lowest limit would be each second!). If the domain gets free you will get a beep, or you can even configure sending an email to your smartphone.
(The email configuration is easy on Mac/Linux, for Windows you will have to install some command line email client and set the command for it)

It works for many TLDs, not all - but most of the most important.

If I want some domains very much i put the list to the tool and it makes all the work for me - when some domain get free I get an email at my phone.

Here more: http://1-single-letter-domains.com/sfdtool/private_demo/