whois.sc -- IE Addressbar Search

While it’s often handy to be able to look up the ownership details of a domain name a lot of the online services have implemented little graphical images which you need to read and then type into a text box before you can actually get the results back. I recently found a new one, Whois Source that allows you to specify the domain in the URL. This makes the service both simple to use from the browser and easy to integrate in to third party programs.

Below is a registry entry that will add the whois keyword to the IE address bar. You can either select the text below, save it locally with a ‘.reg’ extension and then double click or just save the whois_sc.reg file. Once you’ve got the extension installed, type ‘whois www.google.com’ in the address bar and you’ll be whisked off to the whois.sc information for that site.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchUrl\whois]

@="http://www.whois.sc/%s"

Warning: This changes your registry which is never fully safe. You use this at your own risk.