Find DNS records

Find DNS records

Enter a URL Exmaple: Smallseotoolz.com

Website Owners Must Find DNS records

Why do webmasters and owners need to find DNS records? The reason for this is that they must check if their websites are healthy. After engaging a web service provider to host a website, it becomes imperative to make sure the website is hosted correctly and is operational.

DNS stands for Domain Name Server, and it’s the largest online digital database in the world. It contains information about every website that exists on the internet. Every website is assigned an IP (Internet Protocol) address. The data contained in the DNS records of a website tell the web server how to respond to requests made to a domain.

DNS Records Explained

Here are some facts that any webmaster, website manager must know about DNS records. When you fetch a DNS record for any domain, the fields that will be displayed are explained.

• Host: This field will show the domain name to which the resource record refers. If we entered examples.com, the host would be examples.com. It is the root name of the domain.
• Ttl: This is an abbreviation for ‘Time to Live.' It is the time of seconds for which the record will be valid.
• Class: The class resource field will contain ‘IN.' It indicates that it’s an internet record. There are other classes also, but in general, this will always be ‘IN.'
• Type: The type defines the resource format of the record. There are many types of resource records the most common is ‘A.'
  • Type A indicates that an IPv4 address has been allocated to the record.
  • AAAA means that the resource has an IPv6 address.
  • CNAME in type means that the hostname is pointing to another hostname.
  • MX is used to indicate mail servers.
  • NS is used to indicate which Name Server is for the domain
  • SOA means State of Authority and indicates when the last time the domain was updated.
  • SRV stands for Service and shows the TCP service used by the domain.
  • TXT record allows the webmaster, SEO to insert any text in the field.
  • PTR is pointer records that are used for reverse lookups.
• IP: This is the most important field in the first DNS record as it indicates the IP address on which the domain operates.

Name Servers

When a DNS record is looked up, it will contain at least three NS known as Name Server records. The name server record keeps entries of the name servers used to manage the website’s DNS records. For example, your domain name is example.com, and the site is being hosted and managed on godaddy.com, the name server records would be:

NS1: godaddy.com

NS2: godaddy.com

NS3: godaddy.com

Every domain that’s hosted on the internet must have at least two NS (Name Server) records. In case there is no response from one the web server will fetch the record from the second server.

The ‘Target’ field in the DNS record contains the name of the web hosting service provider.

In a DNS record in the SOA record, you might see cPanel in the Rname. Rname is the abbreviation for ‘Resource name.' Some web hosting service providers include a web hosting control panel which is called ‘cPanel.' This facility allows website owners to manage their websites through a web-based interface. This program provides a graphical interface to website owners to UNIX-hosted websites. Website administrators and webmasters can control various aspects of their website and servers through this interface.

For example, when a website has been developed and is ready for hosting on a web server. The website owner will get in touch with the hosting service provider who will give access to the website on the hosting server. The website owner will use cPanel to upload the website on to the hosting server. Through cPanel the site owner can also develop the website and when ready can launch it. All these services are provided through cPanel to the website owner.

In case a website owner wants to make some changes to the website, he or she can do it through this service. PHP, WordPress, and other website development tools are also available in cPanel.

If you want to delve deeper into understanding what functions do DNS records play on the internet, you must learn how to view DNS records first. Once you lookup all DNS records for a domain you can study each record individually.

How to Find DNS records

The simplest way to find DNS records for a domain is to go to smallseotoolz.net on the internet. Once you are on the site scroll down and click on ‘Browse More Tools.' In these tools, you will see the ‘Find DNS Records’ icon. Click on it, and the system will ask you to enter the domain name for which it should fetch the DNS records. After you enter the ‘Domain name’ it will fetch and display the DNS records.

The first DNS record will be a Type A record. The next two records will be typing NS, the third will be typing SOA, and the fourth will be typing MX. The fifth record will be typing TXT.

Now you can study each record and note its contents. You can use the ‘Find DNS records’ tool again if you want to look at another domain. Also, you can use the tool again after you have made some changes to your domain. It won’t show any content or graphics changes, but it will show the changes if the website hosting servers or the mail exchange servers are changed.

Final Thoughts

DNS records will confuse you if you have never seen them before. Understanding them can be tricky. But if you want to learn more details about DNS records and what purpose do they serve and how to interpret them or change them. There are several sites on the internet that can teach you how to update DNS information and list DNS records for the domain.