How do I check ownership history of a domain?

[john5000]

I just picked up the perfect domain name.

In fact, its so good that I cant believe it was still available.

So my concern is that the domain may have been previously owned and it could have been associated with spam, and thus penalized by SEs.

How can I find out if this domain was previously owned, and learn what kind of history it may have had.

I already googled and yahooed the name but nothing came up.

Thanks!

[leadegroot]

Two obvious stops on the journey are The Wayback Machine (archive.org) and Yahoo Explorer ( [siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com...] )
The first may show you old content, the second may show you backlinks that havent been deleted.
Both, if they exist, may tell you something about the character of any previous sites.

[john5000]

Thanks leadegroot, both of those sites turned up nothing so it looks like the domain hasn't been used before. I guess I just got lucky :)

[HarleyGuy]

Someone may have owned it but just never developed it.

[LifeinAsia]

Someone may have owned it but just never developed it.

Or possibly someone used the domain for sending SPAM.

[stu2]

if you do a google search you will find a tool which saves old whois records for domains. It's not comprehensive, but impressive, all the same.

[edited by: Webwork at 3:38 pm (utc) on Dec. 17, 2006]