The rise and fall of WhoisX

WhoisX is a domain name lookup service, similar to the whois service provided by “domain tools”, but ours was primarily for UK domain names.

It began as a small project to help people check whether a domain was available or not. When a domain was available the visitor was linked to a place they could buy the domain.

We developed out the project into more of a whois lookup service because this was useful to customers who wanted to see details about their domain using a web service rather than understanding how to do a whois lookup from the command line.

However, we soon came to realise that the site was causing a high load on the server because it was being hammered by bots. These bots were visiting thousands of URLs in an attempt to get WhoisX to generate a link back to them. Little do they know that, that’s not how it works.

The project was revamped with a whole load of new features including caching and load checking, which worked very well.

It no longer just did domain lookups either, it did hostnames (showing the “domain parts” making it easy to navigate), ip lookups, country code lookups, reverse ip lookups, mail server lookups and various dns queries all displayed within a few seconds.

We expanded the “social” aspect to make it easier to share and made it ad supported using Google Adwords.

Personally, I found the tool very useful to quickly check a domain, or drop a link into an email so customers could check for themselves.

This was all working great. The tool was useful to us and it was bringing in a small revenue, so it was all worth while.

However, this ended when Google emailed with the subject “AdSense ad serving has been disabled to your site”, the email went on to say:

Hello,

During a recent review of your account we found that you are currently

displaying Google ads in a manner that is not compliant with our program

policies

(https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/answer.py?answer=48182&stc=aspe-1pp-en).

————————————————–

EXAMPLE PAGE: http://whoisx.co.uk/adult-hardcore-sex.cuntspace.me.uk

Please note that this URL is an example and that the same violations may

exist on other pages of this website or other sites in your network.

VIOLATION(S) FOUND:

LINKS TO ADULT CONTENT: As stated in our program policies, AdSense

publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or

mature content. This includes displaying ads on pages that provide links

for or drive traffic to adult or mature sites. More information about this

policy can be found in our help center

(https://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=105957).

ADULT SEARCH RESULTS: As stated in our program policies, AdSense

publishers are not permitted to place Google ads on pages with adult or

mature content. This includes search results pages for adult or mature

terms, images or videos with adult keywords or tags, and user generated

comments that are mature in nature. More information about this policy can

be found in our help center (

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/as/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=105957

).

ACTION TAKEN: We have disabled ad serving to your site.

ACCOUNT STATUS: ACTIVE

Your AdSense account remains active. However, please note that our team

reserves the right to disable your account at any time. As such, we

encourage you to become familiar with our program policies and monitor

your network accordingly.

Issue ID# XXXXXXX

————————————————–

Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

—————-

For more information regarding this email, please visit our Help Center:

https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113058&stc=aspe-ai4-en.

Although I agree with Google’s terms, this was an outside case and I couldn’t understand why they had chosen the example they had, since the “visit website” link on the page links to a website that doesn’t exist.

At the very worst, the URL contains an adult word, which is almost impossible to filter due to the “Scunthorpe problem” and that Google have not supplied a “bad word list” for us to work off.

This meant that without spending a lot of time on developing a very complex filter system so that ads aren’t displayed on pages containing potentially bad words, there was very little we could do about it.

So, this signals the end for WhoisX as we know it.

Consider this 30 days that the site will be closing down in it’s current form.

However, we do have plans to open a new domain lookup service, supported by Phurix in it’s place.

Watch this space!