thegazette.com

We performed a comprehensive analysis of thegazette.com on 2026-06-29. The website returned an HTTP 451 status code with a server response time of 24427ms. 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 8 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 Google Trust Services (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 2 domain(s) (Subject Alternative Names) and expires on 2026-09-09, which is 72 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 2 technologies across 2 categories powering thegazette.com. The detected stack includes Google Tag Manager and reCAPTCHA v3. Based on our comprehensive analysis of domain age, SSL configuration, email authentication, security headers, and blacklist status, thegazette.com receives an overall trust score of 80/100, classified as "Very Likely Safe".

After conducting a thorough safety and legitimacy analysis, thegazette.com 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 Google Trust Services with 72 days until expiration, SPF (Sender Policy Framework) email authentication preventing email spoofing, and DMARC email authentication with a quarantine policy. 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 thegazette.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.

Our technology detection engine scanned thegazette.com and identified 2 distinct technologies across 2 categories. This analysis is performed by examining HTTP response headers, HTML source code patterns, JavaScript library fingerprints, CSS framework signatures, and DNS records. Tag Manager: Google Tag Manager — manages marketing and analytics tags without code changes for thegazette.com. Security: reCAPTCHA v3 — provides security features like bot detection and CAPTCHA for thegazette.com. We also extracted the following tracking identifiers: Google Tag Manager container GTM-PDQV3N. These IDs can be used to identify other websites operated by the same organization.

thegazette.com delivers its homepage in 24427ms (server response time), which is considered slow by industry standards. The total page weight is 8 KB, and we detected 14 resource requests loading assets from 5 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 thegazette.com. 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 0 CSS files and 0 out of 4 JavaScript files are minified. Minifying the remaining 4 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 thegazette.com produces approximately 0.0g 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 8 KB is the primary factor in this calculation. Core Web Vitals data from the Chrome User Experience Report (CrUX) is not available for thegazette.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.

thegazette.com resolves to the IPv4 address 192.104.182.109, 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: ns10.digicertdns.com, ns11.digicertdns.com, ns12.digicertdns.com, ns13.digicertdns.net, ns14.digicertdns.net, and ns15.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 thegazette.com is handled by Google Workspace with 6 MX records configured: aspmx.l.google.com, smtp.google.com, and alt1.aspmx.l.google.com and 3 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 (Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance) is configured with a quarantine policy — a moderate setting, directing unauthorized emails to spam/junk folders. 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 thegazette.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 homepage of thegazette.com contains 56 words of visible text content. This is a relatively short page — adding more descriptive content could improve search engine visibility. The page is structured with 0 H2 headings, 0 H3 headings, 0 H4 headings. The link structure consists of 2 internal links pointing to other pages on the same domain and 1 external link pointing to third-party websites. There are 4 external JavaScript files, 0 CSS stylesheets, and 2 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. The website has social media presence across 1 platforms: Facebook (@GazetteOnline). An active social media presence is a positive trust indicator and helps build brand awareness and customer engagement.

The title tag for thegazette.com is good at 11 characters: "The Gazette". The length is acceptable, though it may be slightly truncated in some search result displays. The meta description is 142 characters (well-optimized): "Local Iowa news headlines, sports, obituaries, opinion, photos and podcasts by local journalists. Independent and family...". 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 page language is declared as en and the meta robots directive is set to max-image-preview:standard. Open Graph meta tags are configured with 4/4 recommended fields: OG title ("thegazette.com..."), OG description, OG image (social sharing thumbnail), OG type (website). 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 19 terms including Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Marion, Hiawatha, and Coralville. 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.