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Daniel West
Daniel West

Reputation: 1808

How to determine if a page is a domain holding page

Is there any way to determine if a page on the web is a holding page? This is because I need to determine if any of curl recieved pages are unavailable due to the domain expiring as part of my error handling.

I thought that a distinct HTTP code would be given at this circumstance but instead I am given a 200 OK which has made things difficult.

Is the only way to search for specific phrases using strpos() in PHP?

Any help would be appreciated!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 303

Answers (3)

hakre
hakre

Reputation: 197757

Is there any way to determine if a page on the web is a holding page?

Technically, a holding page is just a page. So you are technically looking for a page. But then? Can you give any specific parameters what a holding page is? That's hard to do.

So maybe it helps to invert the question:

Is there any way to determine if a page on the web is not a holding page?

If it's easier for you to answer that, you might have found a way. If not, next to what has already answered:

  • Holding pages often look the same, have the same structure. You can use statistics and determine across all pages, which of those pages are similar.
  • Holding pages might have the same remote IP address(es).

But specifically, if you can not define specific characteristics of a holding page, you can not decide whether or not one page is pro-grammatically.

Upvotes: 1

DaveRandom
DaveRandom

Reputation: 88647

There is no reliable way to do this. There are hundreds of different "domain holding pages" and there is nothing standard to all of them.

At the end of the day, a domain holding page is just a web page that has been served like any other, they are intended only to be human readable. Some hosts wont use one at all.

If you ever recieve a domain holding page, the status code will probably be a 2xx code, but maybe not. Some hosts may choose to use a 5xx code. Again, there is no real way to know.

Upvotes: 3

Pekka
Pekka

Reputation: 449425

Is the only way to search for specific phrases using strpos() in PHP?

Yup. There is nothing else distinguishing a domain holding page from a normal web site.

You could search for

  • Certain keywords ("For sale", "reserved for a customer"....)
  • Certain page structures (many domains held by the same company share the same basic holding page structure, like the "blonde domain parking woman" page)

It's probably going to be impossible to achieve 100% reliability though.

Upvotes: 2

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