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Infrastructure

· 9 checks — DNS, redirects, IPv6, crawlability, URL variants, and domain intelligence rolled into one auditable list.
SCORE
85
GRADE
B
FIX
1
REVIEW
3
PASS
5
INFO
0
Probed from Sao Paulo, Brazil
301 Moved Permanently
Checks
9
5 PASS 3 REVIEW 1 FIX
D
CDN & Delivery
Action
No CDN detected
FIX
No CDN detected
Warning::
No CDN detected
A CDN can significantly improve load times for users around the world by caching content at edge nodes closer to them.
No CDN detected

Consider using a CDN to improve global delivery speed and reduce origin load.

C
IPv6 Readiness
Action
No IPv6 support
REVIEW
No IPv6 support
Info::
No IPv6 (AAAA) records found
IPv6 support is increasingly important for global accessibility. About 40% of internet users have IPv6 connectivity.
No IPv6 Support
About 40% of internet users have IPv6. Consider adding AAAA records.

IPv6 support is increasingly important for global accessibility. About 40% of internet users have IPv6 connectivity.

Why this matters

No AAAA records — same impact as 'no IPv6 (AAAA) records'; IPv6-preferring clients pay extra latency falling back to IPv4.

Source: Google IPv6 stats

B
URL Variants
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
REVIEW
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
Critical::
Both www and non-www versions serve content
Got: Both variants return 200 Expected: One variant 301-redirects to the other
Info::
HTTP correctly 301-redirects to HTTPS

www / non-www

200https://www.zdnet.com/
200https://zdnet.com/

Inconsistent — duplicate content risk

HTTP → HTTPS

301http://zdnet.com/ https://zdnet.com/

Consistent

B
TLS Certificate Expiry & Recommendations
77 days until leaf cert expires — 3 issues to address
REVIEW

Certificate validity

77
days left
0d 30d 60d 90d+

Recommended actions

  • Submit your domain to hstspreload.org to be added to the Chrome preload list
  • Enable DNSSEC on your domain for DNS spoofing protection
  • Enable OCSP stapling on your TLS server to remove a CA roundtrip and protect user privacy
A
DNS Records
2 A records, 337 ms lookup
PASS
2 A records, 337 ms lookup
Info::
Resolves to 2 IPv4 address(es)
Got: 199.232.198.154, 199.232.194.154
Info::
No IPv6 (AAAA) records
Info::
4 nameserver(s) configured
Got: ns-cloud-b2.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b4.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b1.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b3.googledomains.com
Info::
1 mail exchanger(s) configured
Info::
CAA records not checked
CAA record lookup requires a specialized DNS resolver. This check will be available in a future update.
Info::
SPF record present in TXT
Warning::
DNS resolution is slow (337 ms)
Slow DNS adds latency to every page load. Consider a faster DNS provider.
Got: 337 ms
A199.232.198.154, 199.232.194.154
AAAA
CNAME
NSns-cloud-b2.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b4.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b1.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b3.googledomains.com
MX
1 smtp.google.com
TXT
knowbe4-site-verification=f250b2a70f1bef3a0d3e9e990a25ada0
google-site-verification=OEcQCk6m6XyHagDu-7BnHevLzPmjK8VLrehu0rHHPGs
SPF v=spf1 mx ip4:64.30.227.218 ip4:64.30.226.54/31 ip4:74.125.148.0/22 ip4:216.239....
facebook-domain-verification=qxzu4bw9l67g1b59xbja9fqgyetsfq
figma-domain-verification=4f7cdfa45ca39f617dd7ba7b165e1bfd5e9b5e1ec18b849c6098df...
MS=ms65532728
canva-site-verification=Dq2WPizCkBmFzG8pX1jdkQ
tollbit-domain-verification=ed765eec87445a9c7fc97d88202a4e247d115ec1dcce8b285564...
google-site-verification=0MpBgJlty0QJTSbL0NsxKSMQao7AtbMttqQqLBpnuqo
gpu99tm7bpjr5ffe6j6lff9c6g
workplace-domain-verification=q8l8dtiG9ONhEmL8nIvj0Z5L2D5A3i
adobe-idp-site-verification=b6e27597198dfc9921fbe2ad78e9a76012bb17d0ddb65389e600...
google-site-verification=VvA5ip4lC7mt45ap9Ra_PNfXXe3OgEsWiV3ZySfTRKI
amazonses:kWgTT8gEghPg1NxciZwhrB3xu+jSMwW8T80qgRg5Kyw=
amazonses:tf7PxlKrP5loKZqpIoiHCfuwRc9LWPN35B8KBlvXYvU=
google-site-verification=pYonWwLh0y5UIPReObylCHtCWHGz9YmWq9OI0NnlEOk
qb5l10tv3ifansmtg2j67ls4vm
CAALookup not available with standard resolver
Resolved in 337 ms

CAA record lookup requires a specialized DNS resolver. This check will be available in a future update.

Why this matters

Informational: CAA (Certification Authority Authorization) records weren't checked in this scan.

Slow DNS adds latency to every page load. Consider a faster DNS provider.

Why this matters

DNS resolution is slow — anycast DNS providers (Cloudflare, Route 53) typically resolve <50ms globally.

Source: DNS performance benchmarks

A
Redirect Chain
1 redirect(s), 866 ms total
PASS
1 redirect(s), 866 ms total
Info::
Single redirect
Got: https://zdnet.com → https://www.zdnet.com/ (301)
Info::
WWW normalization redirect
Info::
Redirect overhead: 866 ms total
Got: 866 ms

https://zdnet.com

438 ms · HTTP/1.1

301

https://www.zdnet.com/

428 ms · HTTP/1.1 FINAL

#URLStatusTimeProtocolServer
1https://zdnet.com301438 msHTTP/1.1
2https://www.zdnet.com/200428 msHTTP/1.1

See the visual redirect chain in the HTTP Probe tab →

A+
Crawlability
robots.txt present, sitemap with 25 URLs
PASS
robots.txt present, sitemap with 25 URLs
Info::
robots.txt is present
Got: 4782 bytes
Info::
sitemap.xml is present
Info::
sitemap.xml is valid XML
Info::
sitemap.xml contains 25 entries
Info::
robots.txt references sitemap
robots.txt 200 OK
Size 4782 B Sitemaps referenced 6 User-agents Wrtn, DDM-DCipher/1.0.7, AutoRAG, Big Sur AI, Brandwatch, Claude-SearchBot, cohere-ai, NovaAct, OAI-SearchBot, omgili, *, AddSearchBot, Bravebot, Echobot Bot, Spider, VelenPublicWebCrawler, ZanistaBot, Nutch, AI2Bot, ShapBot, Timpibot, HTTrack, Magpie-crawler, Scrapy, Bytespider, Diffbot, LCC, Manus-User, meta-externalfetcher, MistralAI-User, SBIntuitionsBot, YouBot, Ai2Bot-DeepResearchEval, anthropic-ai, Channel3Bot, Claude-Web, iaskspider, ICC-Crawler, PerplexityBot, SeekrBot, CCBot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, Datenbank Crawler, DeepSeekBot, Devin, PanguBot, Velen Crawler, LINER Bot, Anchor Browser, iAsk, ImageSiftBot, meta-webindexer, Webzio-Extended, AwarioRssBot, Omgilibot, LinerBot, Amazonbot, cohere-training-data-crawler, ICC Crawler, Kunato, mistral.ai, SemrushBotSwa, "008", Ai2Bot-Dolma, ChatGLM-Spider, netEstate Imprint Crawler, QualifiedBot, Applebot, Applebot-extended, atlassian-bot, AwarioSmartBot, LinkupBot, SemrushBot-OCOB, msnbot, imageSpider, TavilyBot, Claude-User, Crawl4AI, Novellum AI Crawl, Offline Explorer, Direqt Anomura, Kangaroo Bot, Poggio-Citations, Peer39_crawler/1.0, AmazonBuyForMe, bigsur.ai, DuckAssistBot, Factset_spyderbot, GPTBot, PeopleInc-DCipher-Scraper/1.1.0, PetalBot, TwinAgent, Cotoyogi, FacebookBot, KlaviyoAIBot, laion-huggingface-processor, meta-externalagent, Perplexity-User Blocking No — crawling allowed
# www.robotstxt.org/
# www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=156449

# Ziff Davis content is made available for your non-commercial use subject to our
# Terms of Use here: https://www.ziffdavis.com/terms-of-use
# Use of any robot, crawler, or other tool to scrape, harvest, extract, or retrieve any content on
# this website using automated means is prohibited without written permission from Ziff Davis.
# Prohibited uses include but are not limited to:
# (1) text and data mining under Art. 4 of the EU Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single
# Market;
# (2) development or operation of artificial intelligence or machine learning software or
# databases, including by training, fine-tuning, embedding, and retrieval-augmented generation;
# (3) creating data sets containing our content or sharing it with others; and
# (4) any commercial purposes.
# Contact licensing@ziffdavis.com for assistance.

User-agent: *

Disallow: /user/*
Disallow: /members/
Disallow: /members/newsletters/
Disallow: /members/alerts/add/
Disallow: /search/
Disallow: *Xhr*
Disallow: */xhr*
Disallow: */ajax/*
Disallow: */fly/*/bundles/flyjs/*
Disallow: */libs/*
Disallow: */version!libs/*
Disallow: /.well-known/*
Disallow: /index.php/*
Disallow: *?beta=*
Disallow: *?ftag=*

User-agent: msnbot
Crawl-delay: 1

# Ziff Davis bot list
User-agent: AddSearchBot
User-agent: AI2Bot
User-Agent: Ai2Bot-DeepResearchEval
User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma
User-agent: Amazonbot
User-agent: AmazonBuyForMe
User-Agent: Anchor Browser
User-agent: anthropic-ai
User-agent: Applebot
User-agent: Applebot-extended
User-Agent: atlassian-bot
User-Agent: AutoRAG
User-agent: AwarioSmartBot
User-Agent: Big Sur AI
User-agent: bigsur.ai
User-Agent: Brandwatch
User-Agent: Bravebot
User-agent: Bytespider
User-agent: CCBot
User-agent: Channel3Bot
User-agent: ChatGLM-Spider
User-agent: ChatGPT-User
User-agent: Claude-SearchBot
User-agent: Claude-User
User-agent: Claude-Web
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: ClaudeBot
User-agent: cohere-ai
User-agent: cohere-training-data-crawler
User-agent: Cotoyogi
User-agent: Crawl4AI
User-agent: Datenbank Crawler
User-agent: DeepSeekBot
User-agent: Devin
User-agent: Diffbot
User-Agent: Direqt Anomura
User-agent: DuckAssistBot
User-Agent: Echobot Bot
User-agent: FacebookBot
User-Agent: Factset_spyderbot
User-agent: GPTBot
User-agent: iAsk
User-agent: iaskspider
User-Agent: ICC Crawler
User-agent: ICC-Crawler
User-agent: ImageSiftBot
User-agent: imageSpider
User-agent: Kangaroo Bot
User-Agent: KlaviyoAIBot
User-agent: Kunato
User-agent: laion-huggingface-processor
User-agent: LCC
User-Agent: LINER Bot
User-agent: LinerBot
User-agent: LinkupBot
User-agent: Manus-User
User-agent: meta-externalagent
User-agent: meta-externalfetcher
User-Agent: meta-webindexer
User-agent: mistral.ai
User-agent: MistralAI-User
User-agent: netEstate Imprint Crawler
User-agent: NovaAct
User-Agent: Novellum AI Crawl
User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
User-agent: omgili
User-agent: PanguBot
User-agent: PeopleInc-DCipher-Scraper/1.1.0
User-agent: Perplexity-User
User-agent: PerplexityBot
User-agent: PetalBot
User-agent: Poggio-Citations
User-agent: QualifiedBot
User-agent: SBIntuitionsBot
User-agent: SeekrBot
User-Agent: SemrushBot-OCOB
User-Agent: SemrushBotSwa
User-Agent: ShapBot
User-agent: Spider
User-agent: TavilyBot
User-agent: Timpibot
User-agent: TwinAgent
User-agent: Velen Crawler
User-Agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler
User-agent: Webzio-Extended
User-agent: Wrtn
User-agent: YouBot
User-agent: ZanistaBot

Allow: /article/how-ai-companies-are-secretly-collecting-training-data-from-the-web-and-why-it-matters/
Allow: /article/how-proxy-servers-actually-work-and-why-theyre-so-valuable/
Allow: /article/how-to-remove-your-personal-information-from-whitepages-in-5-steps-and-why-you-should/
Allow: /article/how-to-undo-a-reconciliation-in-quickbooks-online-the-easy-way/
Allow: /article/i-found-the-easiest-way-to-delete-myself-from-the-internet-and-why-you-shouldnt-wait-to-use-it-too/
Allow: /article/incogni-vs-deleteme/
Allow: /article/this-proxy-provider-i-tested-is-the-best-for-web-scraping-and-its-not-iproyal-or-marsproxies/
Disallow: /

# ZDnet bot list
User-agent: "008"
User-agent: AwarioRssBot
User-agent: AwarioSmartBot
User-agent: DDM-DCipher/1.0.7
User-agent: HTTrack
User-agent: Magpie-crawler
User-agent: Nutch
User-agent: Offline Explorer
User-agent: Omgilibot
User-agent: Peer39_crawler/1.0
User-agent: Scrapy
Disallow: /

Sitemap: https://www.zdnet.com/sitemaps/news.xml
Sitemap: https://www.zdnet.com/sitemaps/topics.xml
Sitemap: https://www.zdnet.com/sitemaps/article/index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.zdnet.com/sitemaps/gallery/index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.zdnet.com/sitemaps/video/index.xml
Sitemap: https://www.zdnet.com/sitemaps/review/index.xml

A+
Domain Intelligence
zdnet.com — via CSC Corporate Domains, Inc., 31 years, 5 months old, hosted on Fastly
PASS
zdnet.com — via CSC Corporate Domains, Inc., 31 years, 5 months old, hosted on Fastly
Info::
Domain registered until Apr 28, 2029 (3 years remaining)
Info::
DNSSEC is not enabled
DNSSEC protects against DNS spoofing attacks. While not required, enabling DNSSEC adds an additional layer of security. Contact your DNS provider to enable it.
Info::
Registrar: CSC Corporate Domains, Inc.
Warning::
Registrar lock is NOT enabled
The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.
Info::
Hosting: Fastly
Got: AS54113
Domain expiry

1047 days

April 28, 2029

SSL certificate

77 days

Issued by Let's Encrypt

Domain age

31 years, 5 months

Registered April 27, 1995

DNSSEC

Not enabled

Protects against DNS spoofing

Hosting

Fastly

ASN AS54113

199.232.198.154

Registrar

CSC Corporate Domains, Inc.

Unlocked 4 NS records
Expiry timeline
Today
+1 year
Domain expiry SSL expiry Danger zone (≤30 days)
Recommended actions
  • Enable DNSSEC to protect visitors from DNS spoofing
  • Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) to block unauthorized domain transfers
Registrar CSC Corporate Domains, Inc.
Created April 27, 1995 (31 years, 5 months ago)
Expires April 28, 2029 (3 years)
Last Updated August 21, 2025
Name Servers ns-cloud-b1.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b2.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b3.googledomains.com, ns-cloud-b4.googledomains.com
DNSSEC Not enabled
Hosting
IP Address 199.232.198.154
ASN AS54113 (FASTLY - Fastly, Inc., US)
Provider Fastly
Data source: rdap (0.7s)

DNSSEC protects against DNS spoofing attacks. While not required, enabling DNSSEC adds an additional layer of security. Contact your DNS provider to enable it.

Why this matters

Without DNSSEC, an attacker who can poison your DNS can hijack your domain — and SSL certs alone don't stop them.

Learn more

DNSSEC adds cryptographic signatures to DNS records, preventing forged responses from poisoning resolver caches. Without it, an attacker who controls the network path can redirect your domain to a malicious server before any HTTPS handshake happens. Most modern registrars (Cloudflare, Google Domains, Route 53) enable it with one toggle.

Source: ICANN / RFC 4033

The domain can be transferred without an unlock step. Enable registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited) in your registrar's control panel to protect against unauthorized or accidental transfers.

Why this matters

Without registrar lock, an attacker who phishes your registrar credentials can transfer the domain in minutes — total brand hijack.

Learn more

Registrar lock (clientTransferProhibited, clientUpdateProhibited, clientDeleteProhibited) requires extra verification before any transfer/update/delete. Every major registrar offers it free. Combined with 2FA on your registrar account, it's the strongest defense against domain hijacking.

Source: ICANN / domain-security best practice

A
HTTP Probe Timing
Total 423 ms — DNS, TCP, TLS, TTFB, content transfer breakdown
PASS
DNS Lookup DNS Lookup — time to resolve the domain name to an IP address.
57 ms
TCP Connect TCP Connect — time to establish a TCP connection to the server.
107 ms
TLS Handshake TLS Handshake — time to complete the HTTPS encryption handshake.
143 ms
Time to First Byte Time to First Byte — how long the server takes to respond with the first byte of data.
423 ms
Total Time Total request time from DNS lookup through full response.
423 ms

Connection waterfall

DNS Lookup 57 ms TCP Connect 107 ms TLS Handshake 143 ms Server Processing 116 ms Content Transfer 0 ms
All checks on this page are automated. Results are estimates - run targeted manual reviews when the score affects a release decision.

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