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Where can I find a list of domain names that I can download in a text file? I looked around and I found many sites with lists of expired domain names or domain names that will expire soon, but that's not what I need, I need a list of CURRENTLY REGISTERED domain names. The closest I found was this site (hxxp://www.list-of-domains.org/), but what I'm looking for ideally is just a plain list of registered domains and not some web links split across many pages full with ads and no text file. I know it's possible, after all how do these sites get the list of domains that they use? Where can I find such a list?

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Quite apart from this having nothing to do with system administration, the only thing that I can think of when reading the question is that this is for spamming. Feel free to prove me wrong. – John Gardeniers May 16 '10 at 0:51
I use the master TLD list to find available domains. – jm. Nov 5 '10 at 22:36
You can get a list from verisign.com/domain-name-services/domain-information-center/… – jm. Nov 5 '10 at 22:36
These guys also sell the lists: premiumdrops.com/zones.html – jm. Nov 5 '10 at 22:39
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closed as off topic by John Gardeniers, ErikA, SvenW, Sam♦, splattne♦ May 17 '10 at 18:27

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3 Answers

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You cannot download a list of all registered domains. There is no such list. DNS is a hierarchal, delegated and distributed service where TLDs (Top Level Domains, e.g. .com and .uk) are managed by disparate registrar authorities. Although changes to ICANN policies appear to be curbing the widespread use of "domain parking", it is still quite common for automated services to be constantly registering new domains and re-registered expired ones. For this reason alone, it's virtually impossible for there to be a single authoritative list of registered domains.

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So how does the site I posted have a huge list of domains? I don't need a complete list, I just need a massive list of millions of domain names. – Eric Chang May 15 '10 at 21:04
Like ceejayoz said, probably by crawling the web or perhaps by paying the registrars for them. The point is, there is no master list, if you want a list you have to either build it yourself or buy it from someone who's done that work for you. – David Zaslavsky May 16 '10 at 0:28
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up vote 3 down vote

Depending on what you're going to use that data for, you can get a bulk copy of the ARIN whois database. More information here. I would recommend researching / contacting the other RIRs for information concerning their bulk WHOIS policies.

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up vote 2 down vote

I know it's possible, after all how do these sites get the list of domains that they use? Where can I find such a list?

There is no such list. Sites that have large lists probably collected them by crawling (similar to how Google finds web pages) or by purchasing them from the bigger registrars.

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