What can DHSea Score check?
Back to DHSea Score · Last updated October 15, 2026
DHSea Score grades public websites. This page explains what that means, why some addresses are refused, and what to try when you see an error.
What counts as a public website
A website is public when anyone on the internet can open it by its domain name, without signing in and without being on a particular network, VPN or device. A good test: open the address in a private browser window on your phone using mobile data. If you see the page, it is public.
- Public: a business site, a blog (WordPress.com, Squarespace, Wix, Shopify, GitHub Pages and similar hosts), a landing page on a real domain, a staging site on a public domain that has no login.
- Not public: pages that only exist on your own computer or office network, sites that need a VPN, and pages behind a login or paywall (we would only see the sign-in page).
What counts as private, and why we refuse it
DHSea Score runs on our servers, so it fetches your page from the public internet. If it could also fetch private addresses, anyone could use it to probe networks they should not reach. So we refuse any address that points to a private or reserved network. We check this twice: on the name you type, and on the address the name actually resolves to.
| What you entered or what it points to | Result | Why |
|---|---|---|
localhost, 127.0.0.1, [::1] | Refused | Your own machine, not reachable from the internet |
10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x to 172.31.x.x, 192.168.x.x | Refused | Private home or office network ranges |
169.254.x.x, 100.64.x.x to 100.127.x.x | Refused | Link-local and carrier-internal ranges |
Names ending in .local, .internal, .lan, .home, .corp, .intranet, or a single word such as intranet | Refused | Internal names that do not exist on the public internet |
Any raw IP address, such as 93.184.216.34 | Refused | We check sites by domain name only |
| A normal-looking domain whose DNS record points at a private address | Refused | The name is public but the address behind it is not |
| A normal domain on the public internet | Checked | This is what the tool is for |
I entered my own public site and it said private
That should not happen for a site on the public internet. Two things to check:
- Your DNS. Look up your domain's A and AAAA records. If one of them is a private address (for example a leftover
10.or192.168.record from an internal setup), the public internet cannot reach it either, and we refuse it. Fixing the DNS record fixes the grade. - Our mistake. An earlier version of this tool wrongly treated part of the
192.0.x.xrange, which includes WordPress.com hosting, as private. That is fixed. If you still see the message on a site you know is public, please send us the address so we can correct it.
Valid website addresses
- A domain name with or without
https://, for exampleexample.comorhttps://www.example.com/pricing. A path or query is fine; we grade that one page. - Only the standard web ports (80 for http, 443 for https).
- No spaces, and no username or password in the address.
- A domain that does not exist, or a typo, shows “We couldn't find that domain”. Check the spelling.
“We could not reach that site”
The address is public, but our server could not load it. Common causes: the site is down or very slow; a firewall or bot-protection service blocks automated requests; the page needs a login; or the site only answers some countries. Our requests identify themselves as DHSeaScoreBot; see About the bot to allow it. You can also try the page again in a few minutes.
Redirects
We follow a few redirects, and we check every hop. If a public site redirects to a private or unsupported address, or redirects too many times, we stop and say so. When your address redirects somewhere else (for example example.com to www.example.com), the report tells you which page was actually graded.
“The site owner has asked us not to check it”
If a site’s robots.txt has a group that names DHSeaScoreBot and disallows the page, we do not fetch it. If you own the site and want to grade it, remove that rule.
“That address returned something that is not a web page”
A PDF, image, JSON file or download has no page structure to grade. Enter the address of an HTML page.
Daily limits
Without an account you get 2 grades a day. With a free account and a confirmed email you get 5 a day. Limits reset at midnight UTC. Addresses that we refuse do not count against your limit.
Not covered here? Tell us.