Infrastructure - https://metro.co.uk BeaverCheck Audit

D

CDN & Delivery

Action

No CDN detected

FIX

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

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

HTTP Probe Timing

Total 882 ms — DNS, TCP, TLS, TTFB, content transfer breakdown

REVIEW

DNS Lookup

18 ms

TCP Connect

0 ms

TLS Handshake

3 ms

Time to First Byte

868 ms

Total Time

882 ms

Connection waterfall

DNS Lookup 18 ms TCP Connect 0 ms TLS Handshake 3 ms Server Processing 847 ms Content Transfer 14 ms

B

TLS Certificate Expiry & Recommendations

42 days until leaf cert expires — 4 issues to address

REVIEW

Certificate validity

42

days left

0d 30d 60d 90d+

Recommended actions

Add includeSubDomains to the HSTS directive
Add the preload directive and submit to hstspreload.org once max-age + includeSubDomains are in place
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

1 A records, 77 ms lookup

PASS

1 A records, 77 ms lookup

Resolves to 1 IPv4 address(es)

Got: 192.0.66.24

Single A record — no DNS redundancy

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

No IPv6 (AAAA) records

6 nameserver(s) configured

Got: a1-204.akam.net, a24-65.akam.net, a6-64.akam.net, a7-66.akam.net, a16-67.akam.net, a4-67.akam.net

1 mail exchanger(s) configured

CAA records not checked

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

SPF record present in TXT

DNS resolution time: 77 ms

Got: 77 ms

A	192.0.66.24
AAAA	—
CNAME	—
NS	a1-204.akam.net, a24-65.akam.net, a6-64.akam.net, a7-66.akam.net, a16-67.akam.net, a4-67.akam.net
MX	10 metro-co-uk.mail.protection.outlook.com
TXT	dropbox-domain-verification=x1mgnxos79dq stripe-verification=3b642671f82a56f7b057bca119221cb73fe7d4b39f15c81a793bad185920... stripe-verification=112E45BC98B953FBE2B1AC6F943D5842F32F541C54504096A05CBD17B109... _7xc0lf6yhr5g7ihpalkzvo254uqvy6a google-site-verification=UfWmspKA-_itrq0OVyJ3e5dAz9KWewSbOaizF8XDY90 google-site-verification=FxUSDS0_CJHNMT0NKFTnxx5uAJ1aYbw8LC9u4dJjYlI adobe-idp-site-verification=5c874982d9eb77c27639f75fe9649403668793e47bc55164e579... google-site-verification=PNrbHr29l_DrEpZml-y9X2R7tZZRgBkQsCk2nKPCqrE MS=ms27825877 SPF v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com include:aspmx.sailthru.com include:spf... f3pksbqmt9dh1zbsc1cpm46cv038jk33 google-site-verification=PxfiulwLAyOyiiwn4T0RzBvjAd0eyvFn19dXE5R3QoE nq7q8th7kflmhxc16b7dxc3z8b33lwgz figma-domain-verification=ebca25303f471ce3867317e3556ef95c999442e8d0dd46fc5f3259... atlassian-domain-verification=YVO51xB8CMklZCk2cV3OMCVY9wIEP2GoyyujEBzpfD3CD2vSK2... google-site-verification=W7eNgMAaBVitYdSEQljn_sD4TLtXcC_3tbXj1d0WiUs 9jbs4tzs5cnmt7kggb2947mdvr9b4nry lk8h72qbhyc4xhkqvwvyzk7vwrnp2dkm google-site-verification=t2l3c-Vvk6nHP2pMfUuz6hoY75RKOirU9OpzyYfDa2E 0ed1fe018a5c7c43daa1f14880aff8b06586d6a6e8 google-site-verification=2rAospZCHTCU-zWqmBtHZUwpuLLOuoKCqyj5RUmxdao gsz81yg6gpsf9c992qq91vgyh347fn6m google-site-verification=NSkzn6I3eBxIrL7ciLQQEAXSJCE7ailbPhWaD2--G_I y2q63f2v88yy2mj8fhq2cr4n782lq52k LahJi5qZeZJtEJ/575aWKMsDYnXlYizqNcKwU+PBcKmvo5s5B4ffTmIBTE+6TPErQa5kJ/FbcM8EcgmZ... l75qf69m4y12vqn8jlfvwr42npk5d0l6 airtable-verification=21f08445d3c56642dc465f311797c229 google-site-verification=kw4k3p34yFbQ1AQDAcX1B2uqwVgSKaqZede8xrp9Rwg
CAA	Lookup not available with standard resolver

Resolved in 77 ms

Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.

Why this matters

Single A record means a single point of failure — if that IP goes down, your site is unreachable until DNS TTL expires.

Learn more ▾

Add multiple A records for round-robin failover, or use a managed DNS provider with health-checked failover (Route 53, Cloudflare, NS1). Short TTL (60-300s) lets clients recover faster on outages.

Source: SRE practice / DNS architecture

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.

A+

Redirect Chain

No redirects — direct access

PASS

No redirects — direct access

Got: https://metro.co.uk

https://metro.co.uk

5 ms · HTTP/1.1 FINAL

#	URL	Status	Time	Protocol	Server
1	https://metro.co.uk	200	5 ms	HTTP/1.1	nginx

A+

Crawlability

robots.txt present, sitemap with 105 URLs

PASS

robots.txt present, sitemap with 105 URLs

robots.txt is present

Got: 4976 bytes

sitemap.xml is present

sitemap.xml is valid XML

sitemap.xml contains 105 entries

Sitemap index with 105 child sitemaps

robots.txt references sitemap

robots.txt 200 OK

Size 4976 B Sitemaps referenced 16 User-agents ecoresearchCrawler, AI2Bot, ChatGPT-User, ClaudeBot, webarchiv.cz, GoogleOther, TikTokSpider, mediacloud, TurnitinBot, CCBot, ICC-Crawler, PanguBot, Timpibot, WRTNBot, Kulturarw3, special_archiver, tkl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp, VelenPublicWebCrawler, ArchiveBot, Authory, bl.uk_ldfc_bot, WordPress.com mShots, XY-Archive-Compliance-Crawler, img2dataset, LinerBot, Seekr, archive.org_bot, babel, kb.dk_bot, ChatGLM-Spider, cohere-ai, GoogleOther-Video, omgilibot, TaraGroup Intelligent Bot, LivelapBot, Bytespider, CloudflareBrowserRenderingCrawler, ISSCyberRiskCrawler, Arquivo-web-crawler, MSIECrawler, nlncrawler, PageFreezer, SafeDNS, FriendlyCrawler, Grok, Kangaroo Bot, ecoresearch, netarkivet.dk, nlnbot, XY-Archive-Compliance-Archiver, anthropic-ai, GPTBot, Meta-ExternalAgent, MistralAI-User, bedrockbot, netEstate NE Crawler, archive-it.org, bl.uk_ldfc_renderbot, bnf.fr_bot, mirrorweb, nationalarchives.gov.uk, SmarshBot, Europarchive.org, nl-israel_iaharvester2026, Cotoyogi, DeepSeekBot, Gemini-Deep-Research, Google-CloudVertexBot, GoogleOther-Image, ImagesiftBot, Nicecrawler, Amazonbot, Claude-SearchBot, OAI-Operator, OAI-SearchBot, Perplexity-User, PetalBot, QualifiedBot, amazon-kendra-, KunatoCrawler, Meltwater, omgili, Claude-User, Claude-Web, PerplexityBot, Sidetrade indexer bot, wpbot, YouBot, *, Applebot-Extended, FacebookBot, iaskspider/2.0, Meta-ExternalFetcher, WARDBot, Webzio-Extended, bne.es_bot, AhrefsBot, Ai2Bot-Dolma, Diffbot, DuckAssistBot, EchoboxBot, Google-Extended, Scrapy Blocking No — crawling allowed

# Robots.txt for https://metro.co.uk updated 01/04/2026

#

#

# Metro content is made available for your personal and non-commercial

# use subject to our Terms and Conditions of use:

# https://metro.co.uk/terms/

# Use of any device, tool, or process designed to data mine or scrape the content

# using automated means is prohibited without prior written permission from

# ASSOCIATED NEWSPAPERS LIMITED.  Prohibited uses include but are not limited to:

# (1) text and data mining activities under Art. 4 of the EU Directive on Copyright in

# the Digital Single Market;

# (2) the development of any software, machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI),

# and/or large language models (LLMs);

# (3) creating or providing archived or cached data sets containing our content to others; and/or

# (4) any commercial purposes.

# For any licensing queries please contact partnerships@dmgmedia.co.uk.

#

#

User-agent: *

Disallow: /wp-admin/

Allow: /wp-admin/admin-ajax.php

Disallow: /search/

Disallow: /*.pdf

Disallow: /post-style/*

Disallow: /jobs-scrape/*

Disallow: /*ia_markup=*

Disallow: /dmg_liveblog/*

Disallow: /wp-includes/*

Disallow: /wp-content/*.js

Disallow: /wp-content/*.css

Disallow: /wp-json/*

Disallow: /_static/*


#

User-agent: archive-it.org

User-agent: archive.org_bot

User-agent: ArchiveBot

User-agent: Arquivo-web-crawler

User-agent: Authory

User-agent: babel

User-agent: bl.uk_ldfc_bot

User-agent: bl.uk_ldfc_renderbot

User-agent: bne.es_bot

User-agent: bnf.fr_bot

User-agent: ecoresearch

User-agent: ecoresearchCrawler

User-agent: Europarchive.org

User-agent: kb.dk_bot

User-agent: Kulturarw3

User-agent: LivelapBot

User-agent: mediacloud

User-agent: mirrorweb

User-agent: MSIECrawler

User-agent: nationalarchives.gov.uk

User-agent: netarkivet.dk

User-agent: netEstate NE Crawler

User-agent: Nicecrawler

User-agent: nl-israel_iaharvester2026

User-agent: nlnbot

User-agent: nlncrawler

User-agent: PageFreezer

User-agent: SafeDNS

User-agent: SmarshBot

User-agent: special_archiver

User-agent: tkl.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp

User-agent: TurnitinBot

User-agent: webarchiv.cz

User-agent: WordPress.com mShots

User-agent: XY-Archive-Compliance-Archiver

User-agent: XY-Archive-Compliance-Crawler

Disallow: /


User-agent: AhrefsBot

User-agent: AI2Bot

User-agent: Ai2Bot-Dolma

User-agent: Amazonbot

User-agent: amazon-kendra-

User-agent: anthropic-ai

User-agent: Applebot-Extended

User-agent: bedrockbot

User-agent: Bytespider

User-agent: CloudflareBrowserRenderingCrawler

User-agent: CCBot

User-agent: ChatGLM-Spider

User-agent: ChatGPT-User

User-agent: ClaudeBot

User-agent: Claude-SearchBot

User-agent: Claude-User

User-agent: Claude-Web

User-agent: cohere-ai

User-agent: Cotoyogi

User-agent: DeepSeekBot

User-agent: Diffbot

User-agent: DuckAssistBot

User-agent: EchoboxBot

User-agent: FacebookBot

User-agent: FriendlyCrawler

User-agent: Gemini-Deep-Research

User-agent: Google-CloudVertexBot

User-agent: Google-Extended

User-agent: GoogleOther

User-agent: GoogleOther-Image

User-agent: GoogleOther-Video

User-agent: GPTBot

User-agent: Grok

User-agent: iaskspider/2.0

User-agent: ICC-Crawler

User-agent: ImagesiftBot

User-agent: img2dataset

User-agent: ISSCyberRiskCrawler

User-agent: Kangaroo Bot

User-agent: KunatoCrawler

User-agent: LinerBot

User-agent: Meltwater

User-agent: Meta-ExternalAgent

User-agent: Meta-ExternalFetcher

User-agent: MistralAI-User

User-agent: OAI-Operator

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot

User-agent: omgili

User-agent: omgilibot

User-agent: PanguBot

User-agent: PerplexityBot

User-agent: Perplexity-User

User-agent: PetalBot

User-agent: QualifiedBot

User-agent: Scrapy

User-agent: Seekr

User-agent: Sidetrade indexer bot

User-agent: TaraGroup Intelligent Bot

User-agent: TikTokSpider

User-agent: Timpibot

User-agent: VelenPublicWebCrawler

User-agent: WARDBot

User-agent: Webzio-Extended

User-agent: wpbot

User-agent: WRTNBot

User-agent: YouBot

Disallow: /


User-agent: GoogleOther

Allow: /.well-known/privacy-sandbox-attestations.json


# Year Sitemap

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml?yyyy=2026

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml?yyyy=2025

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml?yyyy=2024

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml?yyyy=2023

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml?yyyy=2022

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml?yyyy=2021

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml?yyyy=2020


# News Sitemap

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/news-sitemap.xml


# Sitemap archive

Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml


Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap-channels.xml


Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap-tags.xml


Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap-authors.xml


Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap-videos.xml


Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap-tv-soaps.xml


Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap-images.xml

# Sitemap archive
Sitemap: https://metro.co.uk/sitemap.xml

sitemap.xml 200 OK

Type Sitemap Index URLs 105 entries Valid XML Yes

Child Sitemaps:

A+

URL Variants

www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS

PASS

www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS

www/non-www redirect configured correctly (preferred: non-www)

HTTP correctly 301-redirects to HTTPS

www / non-www

301https://www.metro.co.uk/

200https://metro.co.uk/

Preferred variant: non-www

HTTP → HTTPS

301http://metro.co.uk/ → https://metro.co.uk/

Consistent

A+

Domain Intelligence

metro.co.uk — via Nom-IQ Limited t/a Com Laude, 31 years, 3 months old, hosted on WordPress.com (Automattic)

PASS

metro.co.uk — via Nom-IQ Limited t/a Com Laude, 31 years, 3 months old, hosted on WordPress.com (Automattic)

Domain registered until Jun 17, 2028 (2 years, 2 months remaining)

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.

Registrar: Nom-IQ Limited t/a Com Laude

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.

Hosting: WordPress.com (Automattic)

Got: AS2635

Domain expiry

705 days

June 17, 2028

SSL certificate

42 days

Issued by Let's Encrypt

Domain age

31 years, 3 months

Registered June 17, 1995

DNSSEC

Not enabled

Protects against DNS spoofing

Hosting

WordPress.com (Automattic)

ASN AS2635

192.0.66.24

Registrar

Nom-IQ Limited t/a Com Laude

Unlocked 6 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 Nom-IQ Limited t/a Com Laude

Created June 17, 1995 (31 years, 3 months ago)

Expires June 17, 2028 (2 years, 2 months)

Last Updated February 15, 2019

Name Servers a1-204.akam.net., a16-67.akam.net., a24-65.akam.net., a4-67.akam.net., a6-64.akam.net., a7-66.akam.net.

DNSSEC Not enabled

Hosting

IP Address 192.0.66.24

ASN AS2635 (AUTOMATTIC - Automattic, Inc, US)

Provider WordPress.com (Automattic)

Data source: rdap (0.5s)

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