Network Solutions launches new Enhanced Whois

[chadmg]

There's a new, enhanced whois over at Network Solutions. No more annoying image verification either.

Smart WHOIS Report shows the status of the domain. If a live site exists presents a thumbnail of the home page along with the website title, traffic ranking, meta descriptions and keywords, and more.

I like the thumbnail image. There's finally a use for meta keywords. Here's some more info it provides at the bottom...

IP Address: XX.XX.XX.XXX (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)-UTAH-PROVIDENCE
Record Type: Domain Name
Server Type: Apache 1
Lock Status: ACTIVE
Web Site Status: Active
DMOZ: 7 listings
Y! Directory: see listings
Secure: Yes
E-commerce: Yes
Traffic Ranking:1
Data as of: 26-May-2004

[tedster]

Thanks for bringing up the topic - I do like the changes.

It seems like only yesterday when I was complaining about almost everything related to NetSol (and so were many others.) It seems over the past year that they are being responsive to crticism - not an easy job for an organization as big as they are.

[GeorgeGG]

DMOZ: 7 listings

All the Directory and URL links have everything after the
domain name in uppercase so if you are on a case sensitive
box you get:
'The requested URL /~UPPERCASE was not found on this server.'
:(

GeorgeGG

[dyland]

Anyone know what the 'traffic ranking' is. Seems to run from 1->4 and unknown. Yahoo is a 1. My site is a 4 along with a number of others I tried.

Dylan

[uncle_bob]

Just tried using it, and all the page did was 302 redirect me back to the same page, no matter what I clicked on. Perhaps it doesn't like that the proxy strips the useragent and referrer fields.

[andrew_m]

Yeah, that's pretty cool.

They might derive traffic rank from how many requests for "domain.com NS" they got on the root DNS servers. That'd be pretty accurate actually.

I wonder how they decide on "ecommerce: yes" -- that's wrong in my case.

[PatrickDeese]

re: traffic rank

well according to this site both WebmasterWorld.com, Yahoo.com and a site I own rate a "1" - and my site gets about 2500-3000 uniques a day - I think that their scaling system needs to be adjusted a bit ;)

[dyland]

I sent a question to their customer service - let's see if they know what the traffic ranking field means.

Dylan

[dyland]

Damn idiots at Network Solutions came back with a totally off topic email about my site not being registered with them. Guess what? I know that! I'm not dumb enough to pay the fees they charge.

I've tried to get them to reply properly. In the meantime anyone with a Network Solutions registered domain that can get an answer?

Dylan

[andrew_m]

Somehow I doubt there is a lot of netsol clients here.. savvy people wherever I look :)

[dyland]

Interesting company... so these people run the DNS for .com and don't quite know the 'certain variables' nor do they have 'full control over their own information'.

.... The traffic ranking value listed on our Whois database is something that our system pulls up from the Internet depending on certain variables. However, Network Solutions do not have full access or control over this information. This is just an additional information that our Whois provides regarding a particular domain name.

[wattsnew]

Chris Sherman in his review on SearchEngineWatch guesses "looks to be on a 1-10 scale, with a ranking of 1 being the most heavily trafficked."

He doesn't say how he arrives at this....and my site is a 3 when it should be a 7...so perhaps he has it backwards...