Determining the Source of Web Pages When viewing an online web page, it may be useful to determine "who" controls the web content and the web server. This page describes several techniques for gaining insight into a web pages' origin.

The URL of every web page is displayed at the top of your web browser. Get into the habit of always reading the URL first before looking at the web page. You should review How to read a URL. Often times you have arrived directly at a web page via a search result or another Hyperlink. You may be several levels "deep" in a particular web site. Study the URL and determine what kind of web server the page is hosted within. For example, delete the latter half of the URL and visit the main page at "computer.domain.name"

• If "company.domain.name" looks to be an Internet Provider, or web hosting service, then the specific web page you were viewing probably belongs to a user of that service. At this point, your focus is strictly on the individual user. Go back to the URL and see of there is a logical breaking point in the URL. For example:
  http://company.domain.name/pathname/filename.ext can be shortened to
  http://company.domain.name/pathname If Pathname is a User_ID_NAME , then this approach should bring you to home page for a users' directory.
• If "company.domain.name" is some kind of specific organization that you want to learn more about, then proceed to the next steps.

All Domain names on the Internet are registered with "Domain name registrars" Domain name registrars are entities which have been allocated the authority to register names for a specific subset of domain names. . Most Domain name registrars provide a "whois" function, where you can ask "whois domain.name" and they will tell you who has registered that domain name. See my WHOIS Overview.

Knowing who owns the domain may not satisfy your curiosity. You may also be interested in where is the Web server located, and how is it connected to the Internet. There is a network utility called traceroute which is often used to trouble shoot network connections. In a Unix or Windows environment, Traceroute can be used to determine the specific network route taken from your workstation to reach a specific remote host. (Dos command is: "tracert sitename.com") Fortunately, there are many Unix systems on the Internet that allow us to originate a traceroute from their location to any other location that you specify. See my Traceroute Overview.    You should recognize that a web serve does NOT have to be hosted at an organizations location, but may be hosted with some Internet Provider. See my Connection Detective for more information.

Many webpages include point of contact information. You can also send an email (or call) the page owner and ask "who are you" :-)  You should also examine the HTML Source code of the web pages - Many web web authoring programs include the author's name within meta_tags which are included near the beginning of a web page.    You may also learn about the organization by searching for that organization's name/domain name in message archives such as Deja.

Finally, if none of these approaches reveal any information about the web page/site... then you will want to  "search upstream" of the web page to see who else links towards the web page you are interested in.  See Searching Upstream.