NODATA
termA negative DNS answer meaning the name exists but holds no record of the type asked: NOERROR with an empty answer.
It has no RCODE of its own, so it hides behind a status that reads as success. It matters whenever a lookup works and still returns nothing: what is missing is a record of that type at that name, not the name itself, which is what an NXDOMAIN would have said.
RFC 2308 defines NODATA as a response with the RCODE set to NOERROR and no relevant answers in the answer section, and says it has to be inferred from the answer. NXDOMAIN denies the name for every type; NODATA denies one type at a name that exists, and a resolver caches it for that name, type and class, where an NXDOMAIN is cached for the name and class.
The authoritative server adds the zone's SOA record to the authority section, and its TTL, the smaller of the SOA's MINIMUM field and the SOA's own TTL, is how long the negative answer may be cached. That SOA, or the absence of NS records, is also what tells NODATA apart from a referral.
RFC 9824 (September 2025) made NODATA more common: a signed zone using compact denial answers a nonexistent name with NODATA instead of NXDOMAIN and marks it with the synthetic NXNAME type in the NSEC record. On 18 October 2026 example.com answered this way, so a test that needs a real NXDOMAIN uses a name under .invalid, which RFC 6761 lets users assume will always return NXDOMAIN.
Also known as: no data, nodata response, noerror nodata, empty answer