Domain Cleanup

Open Domain Cleanup

What it does

The person who owns the DNS estate rarely decides what a brand registers — that is the brand manager. Domain Cleanup lets you hand each brand's domains to its manager, with a recommendation for every one, and get back an explicit keep-or-release decision per domain.

For every domain in a brand, DNS Watchdog gathers:

• when it was registered — from the registry's RDAP service where it is published, and, for the many country-code registries that publish no RDAP, a best-effort WHOIS lookup as a fallback;
• whether anything answers on the web for it, from the HTTP scan of the zone's records, and the screenshot of its live site when one was captured;
• what the domain is to its brand — its type — captured by the same AI call that infers the brand when a zone is imported: the brand's primary domain, a market domain on a country-code extension (brand.fr, brand.co.uk), a product line or campaign, a brand-name variant held as protection (brand-usa.com, a misspelling), the brand name on another extension (brand.info), or a domain unrelated to the brand.

The keep or release suggestion itself is not made by AI. It is a short decision tree over those facts and your domain policy:

1. A domain not yet classified has no suggestion.
2. The brand's primary domain is kept.
3. A domain with a live site is kept.
4. Otherwise the domain's type decides. A product-line or campaign domain, a domain in a market you don't operate in, a sensitive top-level domain (brand.xxx), the brand name on a non-geographic extension (brand.info, brand.biz) or a brand-name variant (brand-usa.com, a misspelling) is suggested for release unless the matching policy switch keeps it; a market domain in a market you operate in is kept; a domain unrelated to the brand is suggested for release.

Each suggestion carries a one-sentence reason naming the rule behind it, such as "Product-line or campaign domain, with no live site; the policy does not keep product-line and campaign domains." Every switch is off by default; set them under Settings → Domain policy (see Domain Policy). A suggestion is computed from the stored facts whenever it is shown, so flipping a switch changes every suggestion at once — nothing is judged again. The platform has no traffic data and the suggestions never cite any.

The type is captured when a domain gets its brand, and the registration date, live-site check and screenshot are gathered for the brand's domains straight after — every zone import runs brand inference — so they are waiting when you start a cleanup. The facts are gathered again when the domain changes brand or after 30 days, so a site that has since gone quiet is not missed. A domain whose brand was inferred before types were captured is classified at the next sweep, which every provider sync runs, and keeps its brand. The Zones table shows each domain's type and suggestion and can be filtered by the suggestion.

The brand manager reviews that list, marks each domain Keep or Release, and presses Finish. Nothing is released automatically: the tool records who released what and when, and gives you the list to act on.

Before you start: assign a brand manager

Each brand needs a contact — a name and an email address. Press Assign a brand manager in the Contact column, here or on the Brands page, or choose Assign brand manager… from a brand's row menu on the Brands page.

One person can manage several brands: give each brand the same contact and the manager sees every one of their reviews on the same page when they log in.

Starting a cleanup

Open Tools → Domain cleanup. Every brand is listed with its contact, its cleanup status and its domain count. Click a brand's row to open its cleanup: a brand with a manager and no request yet gets one started and opened in the same click, a brand with a request opens that request, and a brand without a manager opens the assign dialog. To start several at once, tick the brands and press Start cleanup.

Because every domain's facts were gathered when it was imported, a request is usually READY TO SEND the moment you start it. When some of the brand's domains have no current facts — new domains, a brand that has just been renamed or merged, or facts older than 30 days — the request is PREPARING while the registration lookups and live-site checks run in the background, which takes a minute or two. The request page refreshes itself until they are ready.

A request also stays PREPARING until every domain's live-site scan has finished — for a brand you have only just started scanning, that can take a little longer. You cannot send a request to the brand manager while any of its domains is still being scanned, so the manager never reviews a half-scanned estate and the keep-or-release suggestions rest on settled facts. (A registration date that neither RDAP nor the WHOIS fallback publishes is not a scan still running: the request becomes ready without it, and the date shows blank on the review.)

Every request carries a target completion date, two weeks from the start unless you choose otherwise. It is quoted in the email and in every reminder, and you can change it on the request page until the review is finished. Overdue reviews are flagged in red on the tool and on the request page.

Previewing and sending the email

Once a request is READY TO SEND, its page puts a panel down the left — who it is sending to, the Send to brand manager button, the domain counts, the target completion date, and a progress track from started through awaiting send, opened by manager and decisions finished — beside a preview of the email the brand manager will receive: its subject, the domains the review suggests releasing (with reasons) and what the manager is asked to do. Switch the preview between the HTML and plain-text versions, or press View full email to see it in full — sign-in link, review button and footer included. Request details & reminders expands the rest (reminders sent, decisions so far, and the option to cancel). When you are happy, press Send to brand manager.

Below the panel, the request page lists every domain with its registration year (hover for the full date), whether it is active on the web, its extension type — Country (ccTLD) or Generic (gTLD) — the country the extension belongs to (its name, such as Italy, for a country-code extension), the suggestion, the decision and the manager's feedback. Hover the type for the domain's inferred kind (primary, market, product and so on), and hover the suggestion for its reason. The list can be searched, filtered by suggestion, kind, type, activity or decision, and sorted by any column.

While the request is ready to send, each suggestion is a Keep / Release dropdown: change it to override what the decision tree proposes before the brand manager sees it — the email's list of domains to release, and the review, follow your choice. Choosing Auto (which names the tree's own suggestion) clears the override and restores it. Overrides are only available before the request is sent, are recorded in the audit log, and survive Refresh suggestions.

Sending does two things:

1. It invites the brand manager to your organisation with the Brand Manager role. The invitation link is the email's review button, so they sign up with their email address already verified and land straight on the review — no separate invitation to find, and as few steps as we can make it.
2. It emails them the request from notifications@dnswatchdog.io.

You can resend the email while the request is INVITED. If the brand manager already has an account in your organisation, the email simply signs them in.

Reminders

Until the review is finished, the brand manager is reminded automatically: a reminder email goes out every three days after the last one they were sent, up to ten reminders per request. The reminder says whether the review is still waiting for them or how many domains are left to decide, quotes the target completion date (or says how long it has been overdue), and carries the full request again so it stands on its own. A manager who never signed up is re-invited each time, so the link in the latest email always works. The request page shows how many reminders have gone out and when the last one was sent, and each reminder is recorded in the audit log.

Cleanup status

A brand can have one live request at a time; starting again while one is under way says where that request is and what you can do with it. A request that failed to prepare is the exception: starting the brand again replaces it (the audit log records the cancellation) and prepares afresh. Cancel request removes a request that has not finished; the audit log keeps the record.

What the brand manager sees

The Brand Manager role sees nothing of the product but the review (and their own profile). The review lists every domain in their brand with:

• a screenshot, when the domain is serving a live site;
• the domain name, its type, whether it is active (answers on the web, from the HTTP scan of its records) and when it was registered — shown blank when the registry does not publish a registration date, never as "Unknown";
• the suggestion — Keep or Release — and the reason for it.

The target completion date is shown above the list. They press Keep or Release for each domain (a decision can be changed until the review is finished), and Finish once every domain has one. A manager who looks after several brands sees one review per brand on the same page, and can search or filter the domains (by suggestion, type, activity or decision) to work through a long list.

Each domain also has a feedback box, so the manager can say in their own words why a domain matters or what should happen to it — "we need this for the spring launch", "this was never ours". Feedback can be changed or cleared until the review is finished; it is shown beside the decision on the request page, on the Released domains tab, and in the audit log.

An Admin or Member of your organisation can also record decisions on a manager's behalf — for example when the manager replies by email — and the audit log names whoever acted.

Released domains and the audit log

The Released domains tab lists every domain a brand manager has agreed can be released, across all requests, with who released it and when, and the reason the review gave. This is the list to take to your registrar.

The Audit log tab records every step — request started, target date set, emailed, each reminder, opened, each keep or release decision (and what it replaced), each piece of feedback (with its text), finished, cancelled — with the person and the time.

Related

• Domain Policy — the house rules the suggestions follow
• Brands — assign a brand manager to each brand
• Organisation settings — the Brand Manager role alongside the others