DNS Lookup Tool

DNS turns a domain name into the information computers need to reach it. A DNS lookup asks the public DNS system what records a domain has right now: which IP addresses its website uses, which servers receive its email, which name servers are authoritative for it, and which text records prove ownership or protect its mail. Enter a domain above and the tool queries all the common record types at once and lists them with their TTLs.

The record types you'll see most often: A records point a name to an IPv4 address and AAAA records to an IPv6 address. CNAME makes one name an alias of another (common for www and for services hosted on a CDN). MX lists the mail servers for the domain with a priority number - lower is tried first. NS shows the name servers that hold the domain's zone, and SOA holds the zone's primary server, administrator mailbox and serial number. CAA says which certificate authorities may issue TLS certificates for the domain.

TXT records carry free-form text, and email security depends on them. SPF (v=spf1 ...) lists the servers allowed to send mail for the domain, DKIM publishes signing keys, and DMARC (on _dmarc.yourdomain) tells receivers what to do with mail that fails those checks. Verification codes for Google, Microsoft 365 and other services also live in TXT records. If your mail is landing in spam, checking these three records is the first step - look up _dmarc.example.com and selector._domainkey.example.com as separate names.

TTL (time to live) is how many seconds resolvers may cache a record before asking again. Because the lookup goes through a public resolver, the TTL shown may be the remaining time on a cached copy rather than the full value set in your zone. That's also why DNS changes don't appear everywhere at once: until old cached copies expire, some users still get the previous answer. Lowering the TTL a day before a planned migration makes the switch-over much faster.

Queries are sent from your browser straight to Google Public DNS over an encrypted HTTPS connection (DNS-over-HTTPS), so the results reflect what the public internet sees, not your office's internal DNS. An NXDOMAIN result means the name doesn't exist; SERVFAIL usually points to a broken delegation or a DNSSEC problem at the domain's name servers.

Slow or unreliable DNS slows down every website and app your team uses. Our DNS Benchmark and Fastest DNS Finder measure which resolvers answer fastest from your network, and our engineers can fix DNS, email authentication and domain configuration for your business.