Hello,

I bought a Domain Name today that I think is pretty good. So good in fact that I'm sure it must have been registered before - perhaps the owner failed to renew and it has come back into the pot of available names.

Does anybody know of a website where I might be able to trace the history of a Domain Name? Previous owners, registration dates, etc.

Chris

By doing a domain dossier(http://centralops.net/co/DomainDossier.aspx), you can find out when was the domain name seen for the first time, when it's going to expire, when it was last updated and the current registrant details.
I don't think domain registrar keeps record of old domain owners once it expires.So might be difficult to track previous owners.

Whois.sc can provide you the history but you need to pay for that.

Although it won't show the domain registration history, the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org/ will often show you the website in its previous incarnations.

whois can show you ownership and probab;y the place where the domain is hosted. archive.org will give you information about web site content.

whois.sc may be able to show you whois history for a few years.

alexa.com sometimes stores some info about running wbesites in the past too