How to Check If a Website is Legit

The web is full of threats these day (it can be anything from common email spam to malicious software spread by infected websites). Im sure that many of you do not know how to check whether a website or domain is blacklisted or not, this is very important especially for those who want to buy a registered domain name, provide advertisement space or have a links exchange. It is very useful also for those who just moved to a new server or a new hosting company and want to check whether his or her IP address is clean or not.

One of the great tools i can find in the internet to help this is BlaclistAlert.org, you can use it to make sure that your website is not listed on any of those blacklists. You only need to insert your domain in the text field and the tool will check on mmore than 30 spam and malware blacklists. If the status is OK, then there should be no problems but if it is not OK, there should be an explanation there. Another site you can use is using mxtoolbox. If your site is happen to be listed, then you can find out on how to remove yourself from the list. To check whether a website is banned by Google/Adsense you can use bannedcheck.

To check whether a website is down for everyone or just you, you can simply use this helpful tool downforeveryoneorjustme.com. Sometimes people cant access their own site and think that their website is down for a moment but in fact, they might be having DNS or ISP problems.

To check for the page rank, keyword density, link popularity, backlinks, meta tags, social services (and many more) of a website you can try testeverything. This tools are divided into 8 categories and you can try anything from ping testers to graphic generators.

A decent website should have a contact page with contact numbers and company address. You can also check that information using a whois search and find out whether they are matched. Many fraudulent websites claim that their company resides in US but when checked with the tools it has different story.

Other important factors to consider is the age of a website, a scam site is normally has a several month old (although not all of them are). Usually the domain names are registered several years in advance if the websites plan to stay long in the business.

Check their hosting neighbours using IP search. Many of the fraudulent websites are in a shared IP address. You need to be careful when the neighbours sounds fishy or looks spammy.

Use your common sense and avoid any offers that seem too good to be true. Many of the trusted websites have Veri-Sign logo at the bottom of the page. Click the link to make sure whether the site is legitimate or not before continuing to use the site.