Sometimes you are able to find websites you are competing with, but just don't know who owns it, or who the key players are. Sometimes, even if you do know who owns the website, it is useful to know what other websites they own.

This is where //www.DomainTools.com comes into play. You start with a whois search, which will show you who the registered owner of the website is as well as the nameservers where it is hosted, and more importantly the email address the domain name is registered to, how long it is registered for, etc... This can give you some great insight.

The next step is to Google the email address that your competitors domain is registered to, and you will see many of the other websites registered by the same email address. You can pay for a premium account with domain tools and they will do much of the heavy lifting for you and help you uncover the owner of a website even if they paid for privacy when it was registered. Sometimes there is a trail you can track, like other domains hosted on the same nameservers, or other clues they drop along the way.

Many companies today believe in using multiple websites either for new campaigns, or just competing with each other, because its another window to reach customers. You might discover that there are 20 websites competing in your industry but only 3 main competing companies, and each one owns a handful of competing websites.

Doing your domain research can be very valuable.

Happy Hunting.