Digital.gov Guide
Understanding the Site Scanning program
Understand the data
Learn about the various types of data collected from scanned websites.
Reading time: 1 minute
The Site Scanning engine runs against the full list of federal government websites and analyzes various aspects of them.
The scans operate without authentication over the public internet. Using a headless browser (a browser without a graphical interface), they load each Target URL and inspect what would normally be returned to a user who is visiting that page with a web browser. The results of these inspections form the data that Site Scanning makes available.
The scans currently collect the following data about each target URL. A complete data dictionary with much more detail can be found in the program’s documentation hub.
| General | USWDS | DAP | SEO | Third Party Services |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Server Response Code | Presence of USWDS components | Presence of DAP snippet | Meta Description Tags | Presence of Third Party Services |
| Redirects | USWDS Version | Customizations of the Snippet | Presence of Robots.txt | Number of Third Party Services |
| Domain | Degree of Implementation | Elements of the Robots.txt | ||
| Agency | Presence of Sitemap.xml | |||
| Bureau | Elements of Sitemap.xml | |||
| 404 Configuration | Canonical URL | |||
| IPv6 Compliance | ||||
| Underlying Technology |
Have ideas for what else we should be scanning for? Please file an issue or add your idea to the list of proposed future scans!
