DNS lookup

QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS TOOL

What is a TTL, and why does it matter when I change a record?

TTL is how many seconds a resolver may keep serving a cached copy of the record. Change a record with a 24 hour TTL and some visitors keep reaching the old address for a day. Lower the TTL a day before a migration, then raise it again after.

Why does my domain have no AAAA record?

Most hosts still serve IPv4 only, and search engines crawl over IPv4, so a missing AAAA record does not hurt rankings. It matters on networks that are IPv6 only, which is a growing share of mobile.

Why can I not put a CNAME on my root domain?

A name with a CNAME cannot hold any other record, and your root has to hold NS and SOA records. That is why root domains use A records, or a host-specific flattened alias like ALIAS or ANAME.

What should be in my TXT records?

Usually three things: an SPF record listing who may send mail as you, DKIM keys, and a DMARC policy on _dmarc. Site verification strings from search engines and analytics tools live here too. Only one SPF record is allowed per name.

Does DNS affect SEO?

Not directly, but every failure it causes does. Slow or unreachable nameservers add latency to the first byte of every crawl, and a lapsed record takes the whole site out of the index. This tool reads records; it does not judge them.

Which resolver answers these queries?

Cloudflare's public resolver at 1.1.1.1, over its DNS over HTTPS endpoint. It is a free public service, which is why this tool has no signup and no limit worth mentioning.