- Why RDAP instead of WHOIS?
- RDAP (RFC 7483) is the modern HTTPS+JSON successor to port-43 WHOIS. It returns structured data directly from the registry, which is faster and more reliable than scraping WHOIS text. We route queries through the IANA-published registry map, falling back to rdap.org if a registry is slow.
- Why are some contact details blank?
- Registrars have been redacting registrant name/email since GDPR took effect in 2018. The abuse contact stays public by ICANN mandate — that's usually your best real email for reach-out.
- How are platforms detected?
- One HTTPS request to the homepage, then a scan of the response headers and HTML body for known signatures:
wp-content for WordPress, __NEXT_DATA__ for Next.js, cdn.shopify.com for Shopify, and so on. Same request feeds the meta-tag parser, so it's one fetch across two cards.