From DNS to Web Fingerprints: Introducing DNSArchive Web Search

We’re excited to share a major expansion to DNSArchive: a new Web Search feature that complements our existing DNS history service. With this tool, you can dig into how websites are built and operated — not just how they resolve.

This update turns DNSArchive into a broader web infrastructure observability platform. Whether you’re tracking vulnerable stacks, monitoring technology adoption, or investigating suspicious behavior, Web Search opens new doors.

Why We Built This

DNSArchive began as a way to analyze how domains resolve over time (A/AAAA, NS, TXT, MX). That’s crucial for security forensics, asset attribution, and mapping infrastructure — yet it’s only part of the story. The HTTP layer — server headers, CMS and platform versions, included files, and meta tags — often reveals just as much. Many investigations require that context, so we built Web Search to bridge the gap.

What You Can Query

• Server headers (e.g., Apache/2.4.49, nginx)
• CMS / platform versions (e.g., WordPress 6.0, Drupal, PHP/5.2)
• Linked assets (JavaScript, CSS, images)
• Meta tags (title, description, etc.)
• Internal & external links for correlation and attribution

Example Use Cases

Find Outdated Software

https://dnsarchive.net/web-search?q=PHP/5.2

Quickly identify sites exposing legacy runtimes that attackers routinely target.

Identify Shared Infrastructure

q=cdn.example.com/library.js

Spot common assets across domains to uncover shared CDNs/backends and linked estates.

Monitor Technology Adoption

q=WordPress/6.0.3

Track adoption trends — and find stragglers clinging to older versions.

Who Benefits

• Security Researchers: Pinpoint outdated software, map adversary infra via shared resources, follow phishing kits by reused templates.
• System Administrators & IT Ops: Audit your web footprint, catch misconfigurations, find forgotten assets still online.
• OSINT & Threat Intel: Link domains by overlapping content/headers and build datasets for research or ML.

How It Works

A lightweight crawler visits domains and records HTTP responses and embedded metadata. We store that alongside DNS history so queries can span both layers. Free-form searches cover headers, server info, file names, and visible HTML signals.

This is an early beta — accuracy and coverage will continue to improve. The original DNS search remains intact with record history, timeline filtering, and IPv4/IPv6 & authoritative NS tracking.

Explore DNSArchive Try Web Search

We’re building this for the community — researchers, defenders, educators, and the endlessly curious. Tell us what works, what doesn’t, and what you want next.