opencritic.com

We performed a comprehensive analysis of opencritic.com on 2026-06-30. The website returned an HTTP 200 status code with a server response time of 5208ms. The page is served over HTTP/2 protocol with Gzip compression enabled, achieving approximately 60.0% size reduction. The total page weight is 258 KB. The website uses a secure HTTPS connection with a valid SSL certificate issued by Let's Encrypt (DV type). The connection is encrypted using TLS 1.3 with the TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 cipher suite and ECDSA-SHA384 signature algorithm. The certificate covers 2 domain(s) (Subject Alternative Names) and expires on 2026-09-08, which is 70 days from now. The security headers analysis reveals a score of 85/100 (good). The following security headers are properly configured: Content-Security-Policy, Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS), X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, and Referrer-Policy. However, the site is missing 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 opencritic.com. The detected stack includes Angular 13.3.11, React, Google Analytics 4, and Meta Pixel. The site uses Angular as its primary framework (version 13.3.11). The UI is built with React. Based on our comprehensive analysis of domain age, SSL configuration, email authentication, security headers, and blacklist status, opencritic.com receives an overall trust score of 77/100, classified as "Likely Safe".

After conducting a thorough safety and legitimacy analysis, opencritic.com receives a trust score of 77/100, 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, a valid SSL certificate issued by Let's Encrypt with 70 days until expiration, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) email authentication preventing email spoofing, and a well-established domain registered for over 26.2 years, indicating long-term commitment and legitimacy. Areas of concern include: 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 opencritic.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. The domain is registered through GoDaddy.com, LLC based in US, with a registration date of 2000-04-09 and expiration date of 2030-04-09.

Our technology detection engine scanned opencritic.com 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. Framework: Angular (version 13.3.11) — provides the application framework and routing for opencritic.com. UI Library: React — handles the user interface rendering and component management for opencritic.com. Analytics: Google Analytics 4 — tracks visitor behavior and provides traffic insights for opencritic.com. Advertising: Meta Pixel — handles advertising pixel tracking and conversion measurement for opencritic.com. We also extracted the following tracking identifiers: Google Analytics 4 Measurement ID G-SZ64N8QEK5. These IDs can be used to identify other websites operated by the same organization.

opencritic.com delivers its homepage in 5208ms (server response time), which is considered slow by industry standards. The total page weight is 258 KB, and we detected 163 resource requests loading assets from 8 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 1 CSS files and 0 out of 5 JavaScript files are minified. Minifying the remaining 6 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. From an environmental perspective, each page view of opencritic.com produces approximately 0.13g 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 258 KB is the primary factor in this calculation. Core Web Vitals data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is not available for opencritic.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.

opencritic.com resolves to the IPv4 address 34.206.179.117, 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 6 name servers: ns20.digicertdns.com, ns21.digicertdns.com, ns22.digicertdns.com, ns23.digicertdns.net, ns24.digicertdns.net, and ns25.digicertdns.net. Having 6 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 opencritic.com is handled by Google Workspace with 5 MX records configured: aspmx.l.google.com, alt1.aspmx.l.google.com, and alt2.aspmx.l.google.com and 2 more. 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 is not configured, leaving the domain vulnerable to email spoofing and phishing attacks that impersonate this domain. 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 opencritic.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. The domain is registered through GoDaddy.com, LLC (US). It was first registered on 2000-04-09 and is set to expire on 2030-04-09, making it 26.2 years old. Our subdomain enumeration scan discovered 2 active subdomains for opencritic.com: api.opencritic.com and www.opencritic.com. Active subdomains can reveal the organization's infrastructure, including development environments, API endpoints, and third-party service integrations.

The homepage of opencritic.com contains 874 words of visible text content. This is a moderate amount of content. The page is structured with 6 H2 headings, 10 H3 headings, 12 H4 headings, 0 H5, and 10 H6 headings. The page includes 44 images. 12 images (27%) 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 73% of images have proper alt text — we recommend adding descriptive alt attributes to all images. The link structure consists of 106 internal links pointing to other pages on the same domain and 11 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 5 external JavaScript files, 1 CSS stylesheets, and 0 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 opencritic.com: JCB. 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 (@OpenCriticGames), Twitter (@widgets.js), and Linkedin (@opencritic). An active social media presence is a positive trust indicator and helps build brand awareness and customer engagement.

The title tag for opencritic.com is too long at 75 characters: "OpenCritic - Video Game Reviews from the Top Critics in Gaming - OpenCritic". At 75 characters, the title will likely be truncated in Google search results (recommended: 50-60 characters). Consider shortening it while keeping the most important keywords at the beginning. The meta description is 197 characters (slightly long): "The top critics in gaming. All in one place. OpenCritic is a review aggregator for video games, collecting reviews from ...". 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 canonical url is correctly set to https://opencritic.com/, preventing duplicate content issues, the page language is declared as en, the meta robots directive is set to max-image-preview:large, and a favicon is configured. Open Graph meta tags are configured with 4/4 recommended fields: OG title ("OpenCritic - The top critics in gaming. All in one place...."), OG description, OG image (social sharing thumbnail), OG type (article). 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_large_image is configured, which controls how links appear when shared on Twitter/X. The "summary_large_image" type displays a large image preview, which typically generates higher engagement rates than the basic card type. The meta keywords tag contains 7 terms including opencritic, open critic, video game reviews, game reviews, and video game critic reviews. 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.