When we talk about website categorization we are referring to a process that classifies websites in a large list of categories. Nowadays, using a good website categorization tool can be really useful to block some sites from yours. It also has many advantages, like protecting you from brand abuse or classify customers depending on your preferences.
This classification is based on the data source of each website to be classified. It is typically limited to 100 categories and is a very popular method among cybersecurity solution providers. However, not all website categorization tools are the same, since the features can vary depending on which one you use.
Nevertheless, they all use the same method to get the information: an API. This is a software intermediary that enables two applications to interact with one another. When you provide a command, the API gives you a response, this time being a website categorization.
When you’re trying to use a website categorization API for your business, it’s important to find the best one that matches your needs. Because of that, we picked the three most popular APIs for website categorization:
1. Klazify
Klazify is a well-known URL categorization API that is praised by both professional and non-professional programmers for its ease of use. It is an API that connects to a domain or URL, retrieves data, and categorizes it into more than 385 possible topic categories using an IAB V2 Standard classification taxonomy for one-on-one customization, marketing segmentation, online filtering, and other applications. You may get the result in JavaScript Jquery AJAX, PHP Curl, and Python.
The Website Categorization API scans a website’s content and meta tags using a Machine Learning engine. It also uses Natural Language Processing to classify online material into up to three classes (NLP).
To classify a website, go to www.klazify.com, create an account to get an API key, and then paste and submit the URL of the website you want to categorize. Doing something as simple as that, you’ll discover everything you can about any brand you’re interested in.
2. WhoisXML API
The website categorization tools provided by WhoisXML API use machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) to analyze and categorize website content and meta tags. It assigns the most relevant 500+ IAB categories and subcategories to each searched site based on the domain name. It also assigns a level of confidence to each category. Essentially, the greater the confidence level, the more probable the category is to be accurate.
The output is in the form of JSON files, which may be opened with any text editor. It is also available as a web service (Website Categorization Lookup) that returns simple results with configurable URLs for easy distribution.
3. Safe DNS
SafeDNS is primarily aimed at software and hardware developers that wish to include website classification into their products.
It categorizes websites into at least 61 categories using their domains as inputs, but users may add up to 200 classifications to personalize their solutions. The tool is updated on a regular basis and now contains 109 million URLs in its database.
Also published on Medium.