The easiest way to find out who is responsible for a particular website is to ask the webmaster himself or herself. Websites usually have a “contact us” or “about us” page on the site or an email address, contact form or any other means of contacting the webmaster directly. Some webmasters will leave their Twitter ID or link to their Twitter page and Facebook page on the website. If you can’t find any information about the website’s owner, there is another way to find out who owns a particular website.
The web supports a special search called Whois (pronounced as the phrase “who is”) that queries databases called Whois servers that stores information on all domain names registered such as the name of the individual or company who registered the domain name, the IP address of the domain, date of registration and expiry and other related data.
You can perform a Whois search using Google: just search for “whois www.example.com” (without the quotation) and you will find several results from different Whois lookup services. Alternatively, you can directly query the domain on any Whois lookup tool. My personal favorite is www.zoneedit.com/lookup.html
Click on the link above and type the domain name you want to query under Whois and click on the lookup link. This is the result of a Whois query of nytimes.com:
Whois Server Version 2.0Domain names in the .com and .net domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.Domain Name: NYTIMES.COM
Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
Whois Server: whois.melbourneit.com
Referral URL: http://www.melbourneit.com
Name Server: NS1T.NYTIMES.COM
Name Server: NYDNS1.ABOUT.COM
Name Server: NYDNS2.ABOUT.COM
Status: clientTransferProhibited
Updated Date: 30-aug-2011
Creation Date: 18-jan-1994
Expiration Date: 19-jan-2013>>> Last update of whois database: Wed, 23 May 2012 05:37:45 UTC <<<
The query returns the registrar under which the domain is registered. A domain name registrar is an organization authorized by their respective domain name registries to manage the reservation of Internet domain names and offer such services to the public. The query also returns the Whois server managed by the registrar.
