If you’re looking for a free URL checker API you can use in your apps or website, there are several options out there. Some of these are easier to integrate than others, but all can provide quick results to help you identify any malicious content on your site. Some of these services even offer detailed analysis to give you more in-depth information on the malware or phishing threat that a specific URL may pose.
The Safe Browsing Lookup API allows client applications to send URLs to be checked against Google’s constantly-updated lists of suspected phishing or malware pages. The response contains detailed information about whether the looked-up resource is considered dangerous.
A request to the /urlLookup API consists URL checker API of one or more URLs, and an optional list of keywords to search for. The URLs must be in standard URI format, and the length of each individual URL cannot exceed 1024 characters. If the requested URL is not found on any of the listed sites, it is returned with a status of MISCELLANEOUS_OR_UNKNOWN. If the requested URL is found on a listing, it is returned with the name of that category, or if there are no categories, with a status of THREAT_ENTRY_TYPE_UNSPECIFIED.
There are various ways to integrate the /urlLookup API into your applications, including integrating it with your web crawler (for example, Screaming Frog SEO Spider). This article discusses options to work around the 2k URL limit per property that can be obtained from the API, as well as automating index monitoring using this API and our new Data Studio template.
In the /urlLookup API, there are two types of patterns: fixed text and groups. A fixed text pattern matches an exact sequence of characters, while a group matches an arbitrary string based on matching rules. Groups can be named and accessed from the result object; unnamed groups are assigned index numbers sequentially.
To simplify the process of checking the security of a website, many webmasters use a tool called VirusTotal. This service scans the scanned URL for viruses, phishing attacks, and other threats. It also shows any embedded malware and provides detailed analysis of the problem. The tool also offers open API services for programmers who want to integrate the scanning function into their own applications.
Other URL scanning services exist as well, but most of them require a lot of coding to implement. These include canonicalizing the URLs, creating suffix/prefix expressions, and computing SHA256 hashes of each URL before sending it to the server for checking. This approach requires a significant amount of bandwidth, and it can be challenging to scale up to large numbers of URLs. The /urlLookup API provides a simpler, less resource-intensive alternative. The request to the /urlLookup API is an HTTP POST request with the actual URLs to be checked. The server returns the state of each URL (safe or unsafe) as a JSON object. This method has the added benefit of ensuring that no sensitive information is sent to the server.