If you want information about a domain, anyone who’s been in this business for any amount of time knows that your homework is done through DomainTools. Now DomainTools has introduced another stand alone tool, ScreenShots. It’s essentially the same system as the WayBack Machine where you can see how a site looked in it’s past history. Although they have always been taking thumbnails and recording them, this is a far easier way to visually see the history of a domain or site. Because of their late jump it is going to be impossible to go back as far as Archive.org but you have to start somewhere. I love the recent trend of DomainTools. Rather than creating all these great features and hiding them under one membership, they have taken each tool and created it’s own stand alone website and allowed the see the benefits first hand. DailyChanges.com is a perfect example. The DNS changes have always been recorded by DT but by packaging it in an easy to use format with in a standalone site it has become even easier to use. Ask Fusible how much he likes their tools, he has built his entire site around being the first one to check the changes over at DailyChanges. I think Screenshots will be just as valuable in the future as the database builds. For more info I’ve included the press release below.
Seattle, WA — December 5, 2011 — DomainTools, the recognized leader in domain name research and monitoring, today launched Screenshots.com, a website that allows users to view screenshots of what a website looks like now and throughout its history. Screenshots.com provides a web archive of images and data sets that can be used for discovering and evaluating the history of website homepages. Users can track, and more fully understand, how a website’s homepage content has changed in its lifetime.
DomainTools has rebuilt the thumbnail engine that for years has provided a visual context to the powerful domain name detail information available at DomainTools.com. By launching on the premium domain name Screenshots.com, DomainTools is able to feature this important content in a more functional way for users that are specifically interested in home page archives.
Screenshots.com was created with key features in mind to help users better research competitive websites, easily scroll through a website’s image history, and discover details about the website. Visitors can quickly uncover the year the domain was first registered, find similar type websites and learn how a website looked over time. The site includes the ability for users to request an updated screenshot at any time. The Featured Screenshot section on the home page scans news feeds for domain name references and showcases them on a rotating basis.
The DomainTools thumbnail image capture system, the back-end service for Screenshots.com, was originally developed in 2006. The current version now checks up to 1,000,000 websites a day and, unlike other screenshot services, captures critical external resources like ads and images. With Screenshots.com, what you see is exactly what a visitor would have seen when they visited the site. Domain investors, trademark attorneys and brand agents alike have relied upon DomainTools’ screenshot history tool to make more informed business decisions and to investigate and defend potential trademark-infringing domain names.
For nearly 10 years, DomainTools has provided users with the most comprehensive data about domain names, and the launch of Screenshots.com helps extend that mission. Together with DomainTools.com, DailyChanges.com, ReverseWhois.com, and Reversemx.com, individuals, small business owners, and many large enterprises use DomainTools’ breadth of tools to do everything from finding a good domain for a new business to verifying DNS and WHOIS information on corporate portfolios of thousands of domains.