gmu.edu

We performed a comprehensive analysis of gmu.edu on 2026-07-06. The website returned an HTTP 200 status code with a server response time of 23234ms. The page is served over HTTP/2 protocol with Gzip compression enabled, achieving approximately 60.0% size reduction. The total page weight is 105 KB, and the site is served behind a CDN (Content Delivery Network). The website uses a secure HTTPS connection with a valid SSL certificate issued by Internet2 (DV type). The connection is encrypted using TLS 1.3 with the TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 cipher suite and sha256WithRSAEncryption signature algorithm. The certificate covers 170 domain(s) (Subject Alternative Names) and expires on 2027-02-23, which is 232 days from now. The security headers analysis reveals a score of 70/100 (good). The following security headers are properly configured: Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS), X-Frame-Options, and X-Content-Type-Options. However, the site is missing Referrer-Policy and Permissions-Policy, which could expose the site and its users to cross-site scripting (XSS), clickjacking, and other web-based attacks. Our technology detection scan identified 7 technologies across 7 categories powering gmu.edu. The detected stack includes Drupal, Google Analytics 4, Google Tag Manager, Cloudflare, Google Fonts, YouTube Embed, and Font Awesome. Based on our comprehensive analysis of domain age, SSL configuration, email authentication, security headers, and blacklist status, gmu.edu receives an overall trust score of 80/100, classified as "Very Likely Safe".

After conducting a thorough safety and legitimacy analysis, gmu.edu receives a trust score of 80/100, which places it in the "Very Likely Safe" category. This score is calculated by evaluating multiple factors including SSL certificate validity, domain registration history, email authentication protocols, security header configuration, and blacklist status across major threat intelligence databases. The analysis identified several positive trust signals: a valid HTTPS connection protecting data in transit, HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) enforcement preventing protocol downgrade attacks, a valid SSL certificate issued by Internet2 with 232 days until expiration, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) email authentication preventing email spoofing, and DMARC email authentication with a none policy. Areas of concern include: missing Referrer-Policy, potentially leaking URL information to third parties, the domain's WHOIS information is hidden behind a privacy service, making it harder to verify the owner's identity, and DNSSEC is not enabled, leaving DNS queries vulnerable to spoofing attacks. While these issues don't necessarily indicate malicious intent, they represent areas where the website's security posture could be improved. We checked gmu.edu against 8 major blacklist databases including Google Safe Browsing, Phishtank, Urlhaus, Openphish, Dnsfilter, Spamhaus Dbl, Surbl, and Virustotal. The domain passed all 8 checks with a clean status, meaning it has not been flagged for phishing, malware distribution, spam, or other malicious activities by any of the tested threat intelligence providers.

Our technology detection engine scanned gmu.edu and identified 7 distinct technologies across 7 categories. This analysis is performed by examining HTTP response headers, HTML source code patterns, JavaScript library fingerprints, CSS framework signatures, and DNS records. CMS: Drupal — manages the content and page structure for gmu.edu. Analytics: Google Analytics 4 — tracks visitor behavior and provides traffic insights for gmu.edu. Tag Manager: Google Tag Manager — manages marketing and analytics tags without code changes for gmu.edu. CDN: Cloudflare — accelerates content delivery by caching assets at edge locations worldwide for gmu.edu. Fonts: Google Fonts — delivers web fonts for typography for gmu.edu. Video: YouTube Embed — provides video hosting and playback for gmu.edu. Icon Set: Font Awesome — provides additional functionality for gmu.edu. We also extracted the following tracking identifiers: Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID G-EBUR3 and Google Tag Manager container GTM-PX3VVD5. These IDs can be used to identify other websites operated by the same organization.

gmu.edu delivers its homepage in 23234ms (server response time), which is considered slow by industry standards. The total page weight is 105 KB, and we detected 237 resource requests loading assets from 15 third-party domains. A high number of third-party domains can significantly impact page load time due to additional DNS lookups and TLS handshakes required for each domain. The website uses Gzip compression for text-based assets, achieving an estimated 60.0% reduction in transfer size. This reduces bandwidth usage and improves page load times, especially for visitors on slower connections. Asset minification status: 1 out of 7 CSS files and 7 out of 16 JavaScript files are minified. Minifying the remaining 15 unminified file(s) could further reduce page weight by 10-30% for those assets. Minification is a best practice that reduces download sizes without affecting functionality. The site is served through a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which caches static assets at edge servers around the world. This means visitors from different geographic regions receive content from the nearest edge server, significantly reducing latency. CDN usage is particularly important for websites with a global audience, as it can reduce page load times by 40-60% for distant visitors. From an environmental perspective, each page view of gmu.edu produces approximately 0.05g of CO₂, earning a carbon rating of A. This places the website among the cleanest on the web, demonstrating efficient use of server resources and optimized content delivery. For reference, the average web page produces about 0.5g of CO₂ per page view. The page weight of 105 KB is the primary factor in this calculation. Core Web Vitals data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is not available for gmu.edu. This typically means the site doesn't have enough real-world Chrome user traffic to generate statistically significant field data, or the domain is not included in the CrUX dataset. Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS) are important Google ranking factors that measure real user experience.

gmu.edu resolves to the IPv4 address 20.62.236.203, but does not support IPv6. IPv6 adoption is increasingly important as IPv4 address space becomes exhausted, and some ISPs and regions are transitioning to IPv6-only connectivity. The domain has 1 A record(s) configured. The domain name system is managed by 3 name servers: eve.gmu.edu, magda.gmu.edu, and ruth.gmu.edu. Having 3 name servers provides good redundancy — if one fails, the others can continue serving DNS queries. The choice of name servers often indicates the DNS hosting provider or CDN service being used. Email for gmu.edu is handled by gmu.edu with 1 MX records configured: mx-h.gmu.edu. Multiple MX records provide failover redundancy — if the primary mail server is unavailable, email will be routed to the next available server. SPF (Sender Policy Framework) is configured, which specifies which mail servers are authorized to send email on behalf of this domain. This helps prevent email spoofing and improves email deliverability. DMARC (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is configured with a none policy — a monitoring-only setting that doesn't enforce any action on unauthorized emails. DKIM was not detected. Without DKIM, recipients cannot cryptographically verify that emails claiming to be from this domain are authentic. DNSSEC is not enabled for gmu.edu. While not critical for most websites, DNSSEC adds an important security layer by ensuring DNS responses haven't been tampered with during transit. Enabling DNSSEC is recommended for domains handling sensitive data or financial transactions.

The homepage of gmu.edu contains 1,202 words of visible text content. This is a substantial amount of content that provides good opportunities for search engine indexing. The page is structured with 13 H2 headings, 1 H3 headings, 4 H4 headings. The page includes 14 images. All images have proper alt text attributes ✓, which is excellent for both accessibility (screen readers) and SEO (search engines can understand image content). The link structure consists of 161 internal links pointing to other pages on the same domain and 71 external links pointing to third-party websites. The high number of internal links suggests a well-interconnected site structure, which helps search engines discover and crawl all pages efficiently. There are 16 external JavaScript files, 7 CSS stylesheets, and 3 iframes on the page. The site implements the following web standards and features: XML Sitemap (helps search engines discover all pages) and robots.txt (controls search engine crawling behavior). Notable missing features: Schema.org structured data. Adding these could improve search engine discoverability and rich result eligibility. We detected the following payment methods accepted on gmu.edu: Discover and Affirm. Offering multiple payment options including credit cards and digital wallets improves customer trust and can increase conversion rates. The website has social media presence across 4 platforms: Facebook (@georgemason), Twitter (@georgemasonu), Instagram (@georgemasonu), and Youtube (@georgemasonuniversity). An active social media presence is a positive trust indicator and helps build brand awareness and customer engagement.

The title tag for gmu.edu is good at 64 characters: "A Top 50 Public R1 Research University | George Mason University". The length is acceptable, though it may be slightly truncated in some search result displays. No meta description is configured for gmu.edu. This is a critical SEO oversight — without a meta description, Google will auto-generate a snippet from page content, which may not accurately represent the page or entice users to click. Adding a unique, compelling meta description of 120-155 characters is strongly recommended. The canonical url is correctly set to https://www.gmu.edu/, preventing duplicate content issues, the page language is declared as en, the meta robots directive is set to max-snippet:150, max-image-preview:standard, and a favicon is configured. Open Graph meta tags are configured with 3/4 recommended fields: OG title ("A Top 50 Public R1 Research University..."), OG description, OG image (social sharing thumbnail), These tags control how the page appears when shared on Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social media platforms that support the Open Graph protocol. A Twitter Card of type summary is configured, which controls how links appear when shared on Twitter/X. The "summary" type displays a large image preview, which typically generates higher engagement rates than the basic card type.