December 9, 2011
How did the home page associated with your domain name look 12 months ago? What about 4 years ago? A new free tool allows site owners to take a trip down memory lane.
DomainTools recently launched Screenshots.com, a free online tool that allows users to view what a website's home page looked like at various points in its history.
Unlike Archive.org, another popular archive service and one that only archives the HTML coding of a page and therefore often shows broken elements, Screenshots.com does as the name suggests - takes a visual snapshot of the full page.
Aside from nostalgic purposes, DomainTools says Screenshots queries can be used to run domain name searches for other sites for competitor analysis and to research and defend potential trademark-infringing domain names.
The back-end of the service isn't new - it was originally developed in 2004 and offered to DomainTools' premium subscribers. According to the company, the current version of the engine now checks up to a million web sites a day and the service has now archived 250 million current and historic images of websites.
In addition to screenshots, other information regarding the domain name is offered, including WHOIS history; although this may not be complete as it depends on when the domain name first came to the attention of the service. Some basic marketing related information is also included, such as various SEO related tags used by the site and also benchmarking information against other web sites.
The tool also lists how many other domain names the registrant is associated with, but to see a full listing of those names is a premium service.
Domain name owners don't need to wait for the next time Screenshots happens to takes a snapshot of their home page - by clicking a link on the page, a request can be made to update the screenshot.
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How to register a name: Enter your choice in the search tool and click 'GO'. If after the check the domain names search results show your choice is available, you will then have the option to proceed to purchase registration; which is a very quick and easy process - start a search and find your ideal website address now.
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