What changed on this domain? Reading a DigStory history
A walkthrough of a domain's page in DigStory: current records, the DNS and WHOIS timeline, and how to use it when a site breaks, moves or changes hands.
Most DNS tools answer one question: what does this name resolve to right now? That is rarely the question you actually have. When a site goes down, an email stops arriving or a competitor quietly changes providers, you want to know what changed, and when.
That is what a domain's page in DigStory is for.
Look it up
Sign in, type a domain into the search box and open it. The page has three parts.
The current picture. The records the name has now: A and AAAA addresses, CNAME, NS, MX and TXT records, DMARC, the registrar and expiry date, and the technologies detected on it. This is the "dig" view, without the terminal.
The timeline. Every change DigStory has seen for the name, newest first. Each row is one event:
+ A 104.18.27.120: a record appeared- TXT v=spf1 include:old.example ~all: a record went away~ WHOIS expiry 2026-08-13 → 2027-08-13: a registration field changed+ TECH CDN detected: a technology started showing up
WHOIS history. The registrar, dates, statuses and name servers over time, with the original record text kept next to each version.
Three ways people use it
"The site broke yesterday"
Open the timeline and look at the last few days. A new A record, a changed CNAME or a name server switch right before the outage is usually the answer, and the timestamp tells you whom to ask. Because records that went away are kept, you can also see what the value was, which is exactly what you need to roll back.
"Mail stopped arriving"
Look at the MX, TXT and DMARC rows. A removed include: in SPF, a DMARC policy moving from p=none to p=reject, or an MX record pointing somewhere new will show up as separate events with dates. Compare them against when the bounces started.
"Who owns this now?"
WHOIS history shows registrar transfers, status changes such as clientTransferProhibited being lifted, and expiry dates that suddenly jump. Together with name server changes on the same day, that is a strong sign that a domain changed hands, which matters for acquisitions, brand protection and phishing investigations.
Keep going
- Follow any IP address on the page to see every other hostname on it, or use Tools to do the same for a CNAME, NS or MX target.
- Hit Watch to get future changes as events, in DigStory and through your team's webhook.
- Everything on the page is also in the API:
GET /api/v1/domains/{name},/historyand/whois.
The free plan shows the first 100 history rows per lookup; paid plans show the full history.