Web categorization engines and related tools are built to help organizations classify websites they do business or generally interact with.

WhoisXML API’s Website Categorization API and Website Categorization Lookup used to classify websites into 25 possible categories. Both products can now classify websites into 500+ categories—based on most of the current Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB)‘s list of site categories. A complete list of these categories can be found on our Get all categories page.

As part of giving users more potential categories for each site, the enhanced web categorization engine’s results are presented into classification sets of two tiers. The selected categories also come with their respective IAB identification numbers and confidence levels. The higher the confidence level, the more likely the specified category is accurate.

Querying whoisxmlapi[.]com on the improved API and lookup tool, for instance, gives these results:

Each query will give at least two sets of categories with up to two tiers. For example, from the results displayed above, it is possible to see that whoisxmlapi[.]com is foremost a Technology & Computing website with a confidence level of 95%.

What Can You Use Web Categorization For?

Web categorization is helpful in marketing, web filtering, and brand protection, among other use cases. Here are some examples to show the enhanced web categorization tools at work.

Marketing: Get to Know Your Customers Better

Successful marketing these days requires content personalization. The best way to do that is by knowing one’s customers—what industry they are in, what their company does, and how your offerings can best support their business needs.

Web categorization can help companies do that by classifying their customers’ websites into different categories. That way, you can offer them customized content and the right products and services.

WhoisXML API, for instance, serves tons of customers, including HSBC. Querying hsbc[.]com on Website Categorization Lookup gives these results:

Based on the categories hsbc[.]com falls under—notably Personal Finance, Consumer Banking, Personal Debt, Financial Industry, and Business Banking & Finance—gives more insights into what it does, allowing security companies to focus on offering HSBC solutions that, say, are focused on preventing bank fraud.

Web Filtering: Spot Potential Threat Vectors Before They Can Do You Damage

While probably all web categorization tools can prevent an organization’s employees from accessing unwanted sites (i.e., those that can hamper their productivity like gaming sites or have inappropriate content) while at work, not all can warn of potential threat vectors (e.g., fake news or spam sites).

Integrating Website Categorization API into cybersecurity solutions can warn you of potentially harmful sites that your employees shouldn’t access. We used it to query the known Liberty Front Press (a notorious fake news network) domain alzouzougroup[.]com on Website Categorization Lookup. The tool notably categorized the site under “Sensitive Topics” and “Spam or Harmful Content.”

Brand Protection: Avoid Having Your Brand Tarnished

Protection is a two-way street. As much as you are looking to prevent threats from entering your network, so do all companies. Landing on any kind of block or spam list, therefore, can tarnish brand reputation. That said, organizations need to ensure that the categories their website falls under are not part of any organization’s content filtering list. Using web categorization tools on your own web properties is important to ensure they are classified properly and will not be detrimental to your business.

Do not hesitate to contact us for more information about WhoisXML API’s Website Categorization API and lookup tool and how they can support your website classification capabilities.