Use ScamAdviser to Check Domain Owner's Detail

Besides using Google Page Rank to check for a website whether is reliable, I sometime also use WHOIS service to check the owner's detail who registers the domain.

You can use any type of WHOIS services available and I recently found this website - www.scamadviser.com that has a better user friendly of WHOIS service. It is similar to the normal WHOIS services with additional "Trust Rating" feature. It indicates whether this website is at high risk or safe but I think you still need to make your own judgement.

For example, I key in "softwaretracker.blogspot.com" to this website and I get the rating of 40%. Yes, not very good rating but is completely safe!!! :)

To see more detail reasons of such rating, you can click on the "Summary". You will see the notes mentioning "This is a generic (most likely free) website using the site blogspot.com". You can also look for the "Analysis Details" to provide further explanations which also include some recommendations to you. After that you make your own judgement whether this domain be trusted.

Well, I usually do these 2 steps to investigate a website. First step is Google Page Rank and second step is WHOIS but sometimes I skip the second step especially it has a high page rank (i.e. > 5).  If a website has 0 page rank and indicate as high risk in ScamAdviser, it is probably a scam website. Good luck!


Related post:

• Use PageRank to Detect Fraud Website  

Alternative to Google Toolbar PageRank – WebRank

For some reasons, the Google Toolbar is no longer can be used for the latest Firefox version 5 and above. So you may consider NOT to update your Firefox if you really like Google Toolbar like me. Dear Firefox, I hope I don’t need to make you the top 1 reason that I don’t want to use you like Google Chrome.

2 key features I love Google toolbar are “PageRank” and “Bookmark” as mentioned in my previous post.  For bookmark, I think the easiest way  is to access “google.com/bookmarks” directly and I think it is still okay without the toolbar. Unlike for Google Page Rank checker website, it is very inconvenient. First, you need to copy and paste the URL to the website. Second, you need to key-in the words verification. Third, you need to click and wait. I really feel this is very not efficient at all!

So I found this awesome “WebRank” toolbar as an alternative to the pagerank feature in Google toolbar.  To install this in Firefox or Goole Chrome, please check out the following download links:

• Firefox Add-Ons 
• Chrome Extension (has bugs)

When I tried on the Chrome extension for this WebRank toolbar, it seems like the Google Page Rank cannot be shown for some of the web pages (e.g. my blogs). It seems to me there are still bugs with Google Chrome extension.  So, my recommendation is use the Firefox Add-Ons first.


List of Useful WebRank Features

This fella has a lot of SEO related features such as Google Pagerank, Alexa Rank and Pages Indexed in search engine, number of backlinks, bookmarks, whois lookup and not forget the toolbar customization. Out of all these features, only 2 features that I think are useful

• Google PageRank
• Whois Lookup

Honestly, the Google PageRank is the only feature that I use most often.  I disable  those seldom use features so that the browser loading speed can be faster. In fact, I configure the WebRank to show “Statusbar” button instead of “Toolbar” which I think it is neat since I only enable 2 features. The status bar button is located at the lower right of your Firefox browser. I feel pretty convenient for this "Statusbar" button. :)

Good luck and have fun playing with this WebRank toolbar!