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Infrastructure

· 9 checks — DNS, redirects, IPv6, crawlability, URL variants, and domain intelligence rolled into one auditable list.
SCORE
83
GRADE
B
FIX
1
REVIEW
3
PASS
4
INFO
1
Probed from Madrid, Spain
200 OK
Checks
9
4 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

C
Crawlability
Action
robots.txt present, sitemap with 962 URLs
REVIEW
robots.txt present, sitemap with 962 URLs
Info::
robots.txt is present
Got: 3284 bytes
Critical::
robots.txt blocks all crawlers
Disallow: / for all user-agents prevents search engines from indexing any page. This will remove the site from search results.
Info::
sitemap.xml is present
Info::
sitemap.xml is valid XML
Info::
sitemap.xml contains 962 entries
Info::
Sitemap index with 962 child sitemaps
Info::
robots.txt references sitemap

Disallow: / for all user-agents prevents search engines from indexing any page. This will remove the site from search results.

Why this matters

Disallow: / in robots.txt blocks every search crawler — the site becomes invisible in organic search.

Learn more ▾

Common deployment mistake: a staging robots.txt with `User-agent: * / Disallow: /` ships to prod. The site falls out of search results within days. Verify your robots.txt is the production-intended version. If this is intentional (private site), no action needed.

Source: Google Search Central

robots.txt 200 OK
Size 3284 B Sitemaps referenced 6 User-agents OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, *, bingbot, MSNbot, baiduspider, ChatGPT-User, GPTBot, Perplexity‑User, Googlebot, Slurp Blocking Yes — all crawlers blocked
# UKPMC robots.txt

# Google
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception*
Disallow: /*/*jsessionid*

#
# Yahoo
User-agent: Slurp
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /*/articles/*/pdf/
Disallow: /articles/*/pdf/
Disallow: /articles/*?pdf=render
Disallow: /articles/*?*blobtype=pdf*
Disallow: /advancedsearch
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /search/*
Disallow: /search?*
Disallow: /abstract/*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /exception/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*

# Bing
User-agent: bingbot
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception*
Disallow: /*/*jsessionid*

User-agent: MSNbot
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /*/articles/*/pdf/
Disallow: /articles/*/pdf/
Disallow: /articles/*?pdf=render
Disallow: /articles/*?*blobtype=pdf*
Disallow: /advancedsearch
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /search/*
Disallow: /search?*
Disallow: /abstract/*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception/*

User-agent: baiduspider
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /*/articles/*/pdf/
Disallow: /articles/*/pdf/
Disallow: /articles/*?pdf=render
Disallow: /articles/*?*blobtype=pdf*
Disallow: /advancedsearch
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /search/*
Disallow: /search?*
Disallow: /abstract/*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception/*

User-agent: OAI-SearchBot
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception*
Disallow: /*/*jsessionid*

User-agent: ChatGPT-User
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception*
Disallow: /*/*jsessionid*

User-agent: GPTBot
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception*
Disallow: /*/*jsessionid*

User-agent: PerplexityBot
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception*
Disallow: /*/*jsessionid*

User-agent: Perplexity‑User
Disallow: /classic
Disallow: /feedback/*
Disallow: /*?wicket:interface*
Disallow: /*?europe_pmc_extredirect=*
Disallow: /ftp/oa/*
Disallow: /Funders/rss/*
Disallow: /exception*
Disallow: /*/*jsessionid*


# For all other bots
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

Sitemap: http://europepmc.org/sitemap_abstract_index.xml
Sitemap: http://europepmc.org/sitemap_fulltext_index.xml
Sitemap: http://europepmc.org/sitemap_authors_index.xml
Sitemap: http://europepmc.org/sitemap_funders_index.xml
Sitemap: http://europepmc.org/sitemap_search_index.xml
Sitemap: http://europepmc.org/sitemap_grants_index.xml
Crawl-delay: 5
sitemap.xml 200 OK
Type Sitemap Index URLs 962 entries Valid XML Yes
Child Sitemaps:
B
TLS Certificate Expiry & Recommendations
75 days until leaf cert expires — 3 issues to address
REVIEW

Certificate validity

75
days left
0d 30d 60d 90d+

Recommended actions

  • Enable HSTS: Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains
  • 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, 28 ms lookup
PASS
1 A records, 28 ms lookup
Info::
Resolves to 1 IPv4 address(es)
Got: 193.62.193.83
Info::
Single A record — no DNS redundancy
Multiple A records provide failover if one server goes down.
Info::
No IPv6 (AAAA) records
Info::
4 nameserver(s) configured
Got: ns-348.awsdns-43.com, ns-813.awsdns-37.net, ns-1707.awsdns-21.co.uk, ns-1133.awsdns-13.org
Info::
2 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
Info::
DNS resolution time: 28 ms
Got: 28 ms
A193.62.193.83
AAAA—
CNAME—
NSns-348.awsdns-43.com, ns-813.awsdns-37.net, ns-1707.awsdns-21.co.uk, ns-1133.awsdns-13.org
MX
10 smtp.secureserver.net
100 mailstore1.secureserver.net
TXT
SPF v=spf1 include:_spf.ebi.ac.uk ip4:193.62.52.179/32 ip4:193.62.52.143/32 ~all
CAALookup not available with standard resolver
Resolved in 28 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
Info::
No redirects — direct access
Got: https://europepmc.org

https://europepmc.org

130 ms · HTTP/1.1 FINAL

#URLStatusTimeProtocolServer
1https://europepmc.org200130 msHTTP/1.1Apache/2.4.6 (CentOS)
A+
URL Variants
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
PASS
www/non-www, trailing slash, HTTP→HTTPS
Info::
www/non-www redirect configured correctly (preferred: non-www)
Info::
HTTP correctly 301-redirects to HTTPS

www / non-www

301https://www.europepmc.org/
200https://europepmc.org/

Preferred variant: non-www

HTTP → HTTPS

301http://europepmc.org/ → https://europepmc.org/

Consistent

A+
HTTP Probe Timing
Total 161 ms — DNS, TCP, TLS, TTFB, content transfer breakdown
PASS
DNS Lookup DNS Lookup — time to resolve the domain name to an IP address.
28 ms
TCP Connect TCP Connect — time to establish a TCP connection to the server.
26 ms
TLS Handshake TLS Handshake — time to complete the HTTPS encryption handshake.
60 ms
Time to First Byte Time to First Byte — how long the server takes to respond with the first byte of data.
159 ms
Total Time Total request time from DNS lookup through full response.
161 ms

Connection waterfall

DNS Lookup 28 ms TCP Connect 26 ms TLS Handshake 60 ms Server Processing 45 ms Content Transfer 2 ms
Domain Intelligence
Domain intelligence data not available
INFO
Domain intelligence data not available

RDAP and WHOIS lookup both failed

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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