health.gov

We performed a comprehensive analysis of health.gov on 2026-06-29. The website returned an HTTP 200 status code with a server response time of 35189ms. The page is served over HTTP/2 protocol, however no compression (Gzip or Brotli) is enabled, which means the page is transferred at its full uncompressed size. The total page weight is 91 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 IdenTrust (OV type). The connection is encrypted using TLS 1.3 with the TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 cipher suite and sha256WithRSAEncryption signature algorithm. The certificate covers 3 domain(s) (Subject Alternative Names) and expires on 2026-09-05, which is 68 days from now. The security headers analysis reveals a score of 65/100 (moderate). The following security headers are properly configured: Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS), X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, and Referrer-Policy. However, the site is missing Content-Security-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 4 technologies across 4 categories powering health.gov. The detected stack includes Drupal, Google Tag Manager, jQuery, and Font Awesome. Based on our comprehensive analysis of domain age, SSL configuration, email authentication, security headers, and blacklist status, health.gov receives an overall trust score of 82/100, classified as "Very Likely Safe".

After conducting a thorough safety and legitimacy analysis, health.gov receives a trust score of 82/100, 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 IdenTrust with 68 days until expiration, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) email authentication preventing email spoofing, DMARC email authentication with a reject policy — the strongest available setting, and a well-established domain registered for over 28.8 years, indicating long-term commitment and legitimacy. Areas of concern include: the absence of a Content-Security-Policy header, which leaves the site more vulnerable to cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks, 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 health.gov 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. The domain is registered through get.gov based in US, with a registration date of 1997-10-02 and expiration date of 2026-09-15.

Our technology detection engine scanned health.gov and identified 4 distinct technologies across 4 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 health.gov. Tag Manager: Google Tag Manager — manages marketing and analytics tags without code changes for health.gov. JavaScript Library: jQuery — provides utility functions and DOM manipulation for health.gov. Icon Set: Font Awesome — provides additional functionality for health.gov. We also extracted the following tracking identifiers: Google Tag Manager container GTM-TCNK2RJR. These IDs can be used to identify other websites operated by the same organization.

health.gov delivers its homepage in 35189ms (server response time), which is considered slow by industry standards. The total page weight is 91 KB, and we detected 241 resource requests loading assets from 19 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. No compression is currently enabled on health.gov. Enabling Brotli or Gzip compression could reduce page size by 60-80% for text-based assets (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), significantly improving load times and reducing bandwidth costs. This is one of the simplest and most impactful performance optimizations available. Asset minification status: 0 out of 56 CSS files and 31 out of 48 JavaScript files are minified. Minifying the remaining 73 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 health.gov produces approximately 0.04g 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 91 KB is the primary factor in this calculation. Core Web Vitals data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is not available for health.gov. 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.

health.gov resolves to the IPv4 address 18.154.227.55, 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 4 A record(s) configured. The domain name system is managed by 2 name servers: ns11.hhs.gov and ns12.hhs.gov. Having 2 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 health.gov is handled by hhs.gov with 2 MX records configured: smtp2.ees.hhs.gov and smtp.ees.hhs.gov. 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 reject policy — the strongest setting, instructing receiving servers to reject unauthorized emails entirely. 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 health.gov. 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 domain is registered through get.gov (US). It was first registered on 1997-10-02 and is set to expire on 2026-09-15, making it 28.8 years old. Our subdomain enumeration scan discovered 2 active subdomains for health.gov: dev.health.gov and www.health.gov. Active subdomains can reveal the organization's infrastructure, including development environments, API endpoints, and third-party service integrations.

The homepage of health.gov contains 1,096 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 6 H2 headings, 18 H3 headings, 0 H4 headings. The page includes 14 images. 5 images (36%) are missing alt text attributes, which is a significant concern for both accessibility and SEO. Screen readers rely on alt text to describe images to visually impaired users, and search engines use alt text to understand image content. Only 64% of images have proper alt text — we recommend adding descriptive alt attributes to all images. The link structure consists of 64 internal links pointing to other pages on the same domain and 54 external links pointing to third-party websites. There are 48 external JavaScript files, 56 CSS stylesheets, and 1 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 health.gov: Discover. 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 3 platforms: Facebook (@HHS), Twitter (@HHS_ASH), and Instagram (@hhsgov). An active social media presence is a positive trust indicator and helps build brand awareness and customer engagement.

The title tag for health.gov is well-optimized at 57 characters: "Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health | Health.gov". The length falls within the ideal range for Google search results, ensuring the full title is displayed without truncation. No meta description is configured for health.gov. 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://health.gov/, preventing duplicate content issues, the page language is declared as en, and a favicon is configured. No Open Graph tags are configured. When someone shares a link to health.gov on social media, the platform will have to guess the title, description, and image — often producing unattractive or inaccurate previews. Adding OG tags is essential for social media marketing.