If you’ve thought of the perfect domain name only to find out it’s already registered, it can be extremely frustrating. This situation is very common these days as there are over 200 million registered domains globally so the chances of registering the exact domain you want can be slim.
Having said that, if you found yourself looking to buy an already registered .qa domain, you may be slightly unlucky – I know that’s annoying but just hear us out. While there are 100 million+ .com domains registered out there, .qa has roughly 15,000 domains. More about this in our is .qa a good domain guide.
If you’re in the unfortunate situation of wanting to buy an already taken .qa domain, there are a few options available to you and most will involve finding out who owns the .qa domain you want.
So, who owns a .qa domain you want? Let’s find out.
Double Check Availability With a .qa Domain Search
As mentioned in the opening paragraphs, the .qa country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) only has around 15,000 registered domains so there’s a good chance the domain you want to register is still available and you just had an unfortunate time-out issue when you got your first ‘domain is registered’ result.
To be 100% sure that the domain is taken, perform another .qa domain search (you can do it right here from the search bar below) and cross your fingers.
If Your .qa Domain Is Available
See, we told you the domain could still be available. If you really want this Qatari domain, it would be best if you register it immediately, just to make sure nobody else can get it.
The .qa domain registration process is very easy as you don’t need to provide any special ID numbers to register .qa domains. If you did a search from one of the links above, simply add the domain to your cart, check out and then follow the onscreen prompts. The domain will be registered instantly and ready for use within minutes.
If Your .qa Domain Isn’t Available
If the domain you want is taken, don’t feel too bad. You could always try looking for another domain name but if your heart is set on registering only this one, let’s see what you can do.
Find Out Who Owns a .qa Domain
The first step to registering a taken .qa domain is to find out who the owner is and to find out who owns a .qa domain, you’ll need to perform a .qa whois lookup.
If you’re unfamiliar with the ‘whois’ term, what it refers to is a service that all domain registry operators must offer. When a domain is registered, the ownership details associated with that domain are added to a database. Performing a whois lookup allows you to search that database for all the publicly available information for the domain you’re interested in. You must now see where we’re going with this.
To find out who owns a .qa domain, perform a .qa whois lookup. We offer our own .qa whois lookup service, but you can also perform your lookup directly with the .qa governing body.
Unfortunately, the registrant (owner) information available for .qa domains is very limited so you might not be able to find out the ownership details directly via the whois lookup results.
Now that you have all the publicly available information about the domain, what can you do with that information?
Lodge a .qa Domain Dispute
If you believe you have a legal right to this domain and the current owner is infringing on your Intellectual Property, you could lodge a domain dispute. This will possibly involve launching legal proceedings against the current owner in the hopes of getting the domain under your control,
For more information about .qa domain disputes, the Qatar domain registry, named the Communications Regulatory Authority (CRA) does offer a downloadable PDF, viewable in English and Arabic, about the .qa Dispute Resolution procedure on the linked page. On the same page, you can also lodge a complaint, which should get the ball rolling with your dispute.
For domain disputes, it might be wise to seek out the services of a brand protection company as they’ll have completed hundreds of domain disputes before and should be able to guide you through the process, step-by-step.
Contact the Current Owner
Domain disputes can get messy so to avoid that, you could try contacting the domain owner directly to see if they’d be interested in parting with the domain. This step might be a challenge as we’ve already shown that the whois information for .qa domains is limited.
One way you could contact the owner is by going through the registrar of the domain. The registrar is the domain registration company the owner of the domain used to register it, so they’ll have access to the owner’s contact information. The whois of the domain will link directly to the registrar’s homepage and from there I’m sure the support department information can be found easily. Just let them know you’d like to contact the domain owner and hopefully, they’ll pass your message along. The registrar is unlikely to share the contact details with you directly to ensure they are protecting the privacy of their customer.
Another possible way of contacting the current owner is by seeing if there’s a live website on the domain by simply typing the domain into your browser. If there is a website, then maybe a contact email address can be found somewhere on it.
Delegate to a Domain Broker
If you’d prefer to keep your identity anonymous as part of the contact process, employ the services of a domain broker. They’ll contact the domain owner on your behalf and negotiate a sale.
Big companies usually employ the services of domain brokers as they can keep the sell price down. If the current owner knows you’re from a company worth billions, they might slap a few extra zeros onto the price.
Check the Domain Aftermarket
The current owner might have bought the domain simply to monetise it. In this case, they probably have the domain listed on a domain aftermarket website.
Aftermarket providers like Sedo and Afternic have easy-to-use search functions that should allow you to easily see if your .qa domain is listed for sale.
The domain could also have a ‘parking page’ hosted on it, which are specific pages that feature advertisements that generate money for the owner plus ‘buy this domain’ functions.
Let the Domain Expire
The riskiest option you have is letting the domain expire and then registering it once it’s available.
Domains like .com feature expiry date information via the whois, which makes it easy to pinpoint the date a domain will become available. Expiry dates aren’t featured in .qa whois information, only the ‘Last Modified’ date is available. The last modified date could be the creation or renewal date but it could also be the date the owner changed the nameservers so it can’t be reliably used to predict the expiry date.
If you see one of these statuses – serverHold (Expired), Pending Delete or Expired Pending Purge in the whois information, it means the domain has expired and is currently going through the deletion process. This will be your best opportunity to register the domain so keep checking the whois daily for when it’s finally deleted.
Explore Other Options
You should now be aware of how to find out who owns a .qa domain and what you can do with that information. It’s now up to you to go and explore your options.
We hope the .qa domain name you want will soon be within your control.
