hottopic.com Website Overview & Technology Report
🤖 AI Summary
We performed a comprehensive analysis of hottopic.com on 2026-06-27. The website returned an HTTP 200 status code with a server response time of 19686ms. The page is served over HTTP/2 protocol with Gzip compression enabled, achieving approximately 60.0% size reduction. The total page weight is 866 KB, and the site is served behind a CDN (Content Delivery Network).
Warning: The website does not have a valid SSL certificate. Visitors may see security warnings in their browser, and data transmitted to and from this website is not encrypted.
The security headers analysis reveals a score of 55/100 (moderate). The following security headers are properly configured: Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS), and X-Content-Type-Options. However, the site is missing X-Frame-Options, 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 3 technologies across 3 categories powering hottopic.com. The detected stack includes PayPal, reCAPTCHA v3, and jQuery.
Based on our comprehensive analysis of domain age, SSL configuration, email authentication, security headers, and blacklist status, hottopic.com receives an overall trust score of 72/100, classified as "Likely Safe".
HTTP Response
Status200 OK
Response Time19686ms
ProtocolHTTP/2
Page Size866 KB
CompressionGzip
Compression Savings~60.0%
CDNYes ✓
Servercloudflare
Total Requests1715
3rd Party Domains14
Redirect1 hop(s)
Detected Technologies (3)
💳 PayPal
🔒 reCAPTCHA v3
📦 jQuery
Security Headers
✓
Content-Security-Policy
Set ✓
✓
Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS)
Set ✓
✗
X-Frame-Options
Not set
✓
X-Content-Type-Options
Set ✓
✗
Referrer-Policy
Not set
✗
Permissions-Policy
Not set
SSL Certificate
IssuerDigiCert Inc
Issuer FullcountryName=US, organizationName=DigiCert Inc, commonName=DigiCert Global G2 TLS RSA SHA256 2020 CA1
SubjectcountryName=US, stateOrProvinceName=California, localityName=City of Industry, organizationName=Hot Topic, Inc., commonName=hottopic.com
Type—
TLS VersionTLS 1.2
Cipher SuiteECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305
Algorithm—
Issued—
Expires— (? days)
SANs—
hottopic.com Trust Score & Safety Analysis
🤖 AI Summary
After conducting a thorough safety and legitimacy analysis, hottopic.com receives a trust score of 72/100, which places it in the "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, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) email authentication preventing email spoofing, DMARC email authentication with a reject policy — the strongest available setting, and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) providing cryptographic email verification.
Areas of concern include: no X-Frame-Options header, which could allow the site to be embedded in malicious iframes (clickjacking), 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 hottopic.com 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.
Trust Signals
✅ Valid HTTPS
✅ HSTS enabled
✅ SPF configured
✅ DMARC configured (p=reject)
✅ DKIM configured
⚠️ DNSSEC not enabled
✅ Robots.txt found
⚠️ Missing X-Frame-Options
⚠️ Missing Referrer-Policy
Blacklist Checks (8/8 clean)
✓
Google Safe Browsing
clean
✓
Phishtank
clean
✓
Urlhaus
clean
✓
Openphish
clean
✓
Dnsfilter
clean
✓
Spamhaus Dbl
clean
✓
Surbl
clean
✓
Virustotal
clean
hottopic.com Technology Stack & Detected Technologies
🤖 AI Summary
Our technology detection engine scanned hottopic.com and identified 3 distinct technologies across 3 categories. This analysis is performed by examining HTTP response headers, HTML source code patterns, JavaScript library fingerprints, CSS framework signatures, and DNS records.
Payments: PayPal — processes payment transactions for hottopic.com.
Security: reCAPTCHA v3 — provides security features like bot detection and CAPTCHA for hottopic.com.
JavaScript Library: jQuery — provides utility functions and DOM manipulation for hottopic.com.
Payments
Security
JavaScript Library
hottopic.com Performance, Speed & Core Web Vitals
🤖 AI Summary
hottopic.com delivers its homepage in 19686ms (server response time), which is considered slow by industry standards. The total page weight is 866 KB, and we detected 1715 resource requests loading assets from 14 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: 0 out of 2 CSS files and 1 out of 14 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 hottopic.com produces approximately 0.42g of CO₂, earning a carbon rating of D. The website's carbon footprint could be reduced by optimizing images, enabling compression, reducing third-party scripts, and leveraging caching. For reference, the average web page produces about 0.5g of CO₂ per page view. The page weight of 866 KB is the primary factor in this calculation.
Core Web Vitals data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is not available for hottopic.com. 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.
Core Web Vitals data not available
Requires CrUX API key configuration
Carbon Footprint
CO₂ per page view0.42g
RatingD
Page Weight & Optimization
HTML Size866 KB
CompressionGzip
Compression Savings~60.0%
CDNYes ✓
Total Requests1715
3rd Party Domains14
CSS Minified0/2
JS Minified1/14
hottopic.com DNS Records, Email Authentication & Domain Registration
🤖 AI Summary
hottopic.com resolves to the IPv4 address 104.16.106.26, 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 2 A record(s) configured.
The domain name system is managed by 4 name servers: ns1.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net, ns2.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net, ns3.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net, and ns4.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net. Having 4 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 hottopic.com is handled by mimecast.com with 2 MX records configured: us-smtp-inbound-1.mimecast.com and us-smtp-inbound-2.mimecast.com. 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 (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is configured, adding a cryptographic signature to outgoing emails that receiving servers can verify to confirm the email hasn't been tampered with in transit.
DNSSEC is not enabled for hottopic.com. 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.
Our subdomain enumeration scan discovered 8 active subdomains for hottopic.com: api.hottopic.com, m.hottopic.com, mail.hottopic.com, shop.hottopic.com, smtp.hottopic.com, staging.hottopic.com, webmail.hottopic.com, and www.hottopic.com. Active subdomains can reveal the organization's infrastructure, including development environments, API endpoints, and third-party service integrations.
DNS Records
A
104.16.106.26
104.16.105.26
NS
ns1.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net
ns2.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net
ns3.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net
ns4.p201.dns.oraclecloud.net
MX
us-smtp-inbound-1.mimecast.com
us-smtp-inbound-2.mimecast.com
Email & Authentication
MX Providermimecast.com
Registrar—
Organisation—
Country—
Contact—
Registered—
Expires—
Domain Age—
IPv6 SupportNo
Subdomains (8 found)
api.hottopic.com m.hottopic.com mail.hottopic.com shop.hottopic.com smtp.hottopic.com staging.hottopic.com webmail.hottopic.com www.hottopic.com
hottopic.com Page Content, Images & Accessibility
🤖 AI Summary
The homepage of hottopic.com contains 4,081 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 2 H2 headings, 8 H3 headings, 0 H4 headings.
The page includes 73 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 1,574 internal links pointing to other pages on the same domain and 9 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 14 external JavaScript files, 2 CSS stylesheets, and 0 iframes on the page.
The site implements the following web standards and features: robots.txt (controls search engine crawling behavior) and Schema.org structured data (ContactPoint, Organization, and webSite).
Notable missing features: XML Sitemap. Adding these could improve search engine discoverability and rich result eligibility.
We detected the following payment methods accepted on hottopic.com: Discover, Apple Pay, and Klarna. 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 5 platforms: Facebook (@hottopic), Twitter (@hottopic), Instagram (@hottopic), Tiktok (@hottopic), and Pinterest (@hottopic). An active social media presence is a positive trust indicator and helps build brand awareness and customer engagement.
Content Structure
H1—
H2 Tags2
H3 Tags8
H4 Tags0
H5 Tags0
H6 Tags0
Internal Links1574
External Links9
Assets & Features
JavaScript Files14
JS Minified1/14
CSS Files2
CSS Minified0/2
Iframes0
Images73
Missing Alt0
SitemapNo
Robots.txtYes ✓
PWANo
AMPNo
RSS FeedNo
Schema.org Types
ContactPointOrganizationwebSite
Payment Methods Detected
💳 Discover💳 Apple Pay💳 Klarna
Social Media Presence
Facebook: @hottopicTwitter: @hottopicInstagram: @hottopicTiktok: @hottopicPinterest: @hottopic
hottopic.com SEO Analysis, Meta Tags & Open Graph
🤖 AI Summary
The title tag for hottopic.com is well-optimized at 50 characters: "Hot Topic | The Pop-Culture Merch & Clothing Store". The length falls within the ideal range for Google search results, ensuring the full title is displayed without truncation.
The meta description is 151 characters (well-optimized): "From band tees, pop culture-inspired collections and on-trend accessories, to anime merch and the hottest fashion appare...". Google typically displays up to 155-160 characters of the meta description in search results. A compelling meta description with a clear call-to-action can significantly improve click-through rates from search results.
The meta robots directive is set to index, follow and a favicon is configured.
No Open Graph tags are configured. When someone shares a link to hottopic.com 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.
The site implements Schema.org structured data with the following types: ContactPoint, Organization, and webSite. Structured data helps search engines understand the page content and can enable rich results (featured snippets, knowledge panels, star ratings) in Google search results, which can significantly increase click-through rates.
The meta keywords tag contains 1 terms including Commerce Cloud Storefront Reference Architecture. Note: Google has officially confirmed that it does not use the meta keywords tag as a ranking signal. However, some other search engines (Bing, Yandex) may still reference it.
Google SERP Preview
Hot Topic | The Pop-Culture Merch & Clothing Store
https://hottopic.com
From band tees, pop culture-inspired collections and on-trend accessories, to anime merch and the hottest fashion apparel, we have what's new and next.
Meta Tags
TitleHot Topic | The Pop-Culture Merch & Clothing Store...
Title Length50 chars
Meta Desc Length151 chars
H1—
Language—
Canonical—
Meta Robotsindex, follow
Meta KeywordsCommerce Cloud Storefront Reference Architecture
Schema.org & Social
Schema TypesContactPoint, Organization, webSite
OG Type—
OG ImageNot set
Twitter Card—
FaviconSet ✓