How to Check if Your Domain Is Blacklisted (5 Ways)
If you suspect your website is on a security blocklist, you can confirm it in minutes — and you don't need to be technical. The five reliable ways are: Google's Safe Browsing status, a multi-vendor blacklist checker, email and IP blocklist lookups, Google Search Console's Security Issues report, and individual vendor lookups. Each catches a different kind of flag.
TL;DR: The fastest way to check if your domain is blacklisted is to scan it against the major security vendors at once with a free blacklist checker. Safe Browsing alone protects billions of devices (Google), so a single flag can block almost all your visitors. Confirm where you're listed first — different vendors have completely different removal steps.
Maybe a customer told you a red warning appeared, or your email stopped landing in inboxes. Either way, the smart first move is the same: find out exactly who's flagging you before you try to fix anything. Guessing wastes days. This guide walks through five concrete checks, what each one tells you, and what to do once you know.
How do I check if my domain is blacklisted, quickly?
The quickest way to check if your domain is blacklisted is to run it through a multi-vendor checker that queries the major security databases in one pass. A flagged site is often on several lists at once — Safe Browsing, antivirus reputation services, spam blocklists — and each has its own removal channel, so you need the full picture before acting.
Doing this by hand means visiting a dozen separate vendor sites and interpreting each result. A combined scan collapses that into a single answer: which vendors flag you, and how each one's removal works. You can check your domain for free here without signing up — it tells you who's flagging you and points you to the right next step.
Here's the honest part most checkers won't tell you: no single tool sees every list. Vendors keep private databases, and some flags only surface in their own dashboards. So treat a multi-vendor scan as your fast first read, then confirm with the targeted checks below if something looks off.
In our experience running unflag — where we scan a domain across 124 active security vendors in one pass — the biggest time-waster isn't the listing itself. It's people fixing the wrong vendor because they checked only one source. A Norton warning and a Google red screen need entirely different requests, and each vendor has its own channel: some take an email, some only a web form, and Google only a manual Search Console review.
How do I check Google Safe Browsing status?
Google Safe Browsing is the flag that matters most, because it powers the warnings in Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Android, and Gmail — billions of devices in total (Google). If Safe Browsing has flagged you, visitors see a full-page red "Deceptive site ahead" or "dangerous" warning instead of your homepage. That's the check to run first.
Use the Safe Browsing Site Status page
Google publishes a public Safe Browsing Site Status tool. Enter your domain, and it reports whether Google currently considers the site unsafe. A "No unsafe content found" result is reassuring; anything else means Safe Browsing has a flag on you. It's the most authoritative single read for the warning most owners fear.
Confirm in Google Search Console
For the full story, open Google Search Console and check the Security Issues report. This shows what Google detected and is also where you request a review once you've cleaned up. Important: the Safe Browsing review is manual — there's no API and no instant "remove" button. You fix the site, then ask Google to re-crawl. For the exact warning wording and causes, see our guide on why your domain gets blacklisted.
Google Safe Browsing protects billions of devices across Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Android, and Gmail (Google). A single Safe Browsing flag triggers a full-page interstitial warning before any visitor reaches the site, which is why it's the highest-impact blocklist to check first.
How do I check multi-vendor blocklists (antivirus and reputation services)?
Beyond Google, dozens of antivirus and reputation vendors keep their own blocklists — Norton, McAfee, Sophos, ESET, Bitdefender, and aggregators like VirusTotal. VirusTotal alone aggregates results from around 70 security scanners (VirusTotal), so it's a strong single lookup to see which engines consider your URL suspicious.
These vendor flags are sneaky because they're often invisible to you. Your site loads fine in your browser, but a customer running Norton sees a block, or your domain quietly loses reputation in an antivirus database. You'd never know unless you checked the right scanner.
A few practical lookups:
- VirusTotal — paste your URL; it shows which of ~70 engines flag it as malicious or suspicious.
- Sucuri SiteCheck — a free remote scan that reports known malware and whether you're on major blocklists.
- Individual vendor pages — Norton Safe Web, McAfee SiteAdvisor, and similar tools let you look up your domain's rating directly.
We've found, scanning domains across 124 vendors — 78 antivirus engines, 38 web blocklists, and a handful of search-engine and mail lists — that owners almost always discover a cluster of related flags, not one. A hack that triggers Safe Browsing usually trips several antivirus engines too, because they share threat intelligence. That's why a single-vendor "all clear" can be misleading — check broadly.
If you turn up flags here, our overview of why your domain is blacklisted explains the common root causes, from hidden hacks to false positives.
How do I check email and IP blocklists?
If your emails are bouncing or landing in spam, check the DNS-based blocklists (DNSBLs) that mail servers consult — Spamhaus, Barracuda, SpamCop, and others. Spamhaus reports that its data is used to protect over 3 billion mailboxes (Spamhaus), so a listing there can quietly cripple your email deliverability without affecting your website at all.
This is a different kind of blacklist from the browser warnings. Website blocklists stop visitors; email blocklists stop your messages. A domain can be clean on one and listed on the other, so don't assume a green website check means your email is fine.
Tools to check email and IP reputation
- Spamhaus and MXToolbox — look up your domain and your sending IP against dozens of DNSBLs at once.
- Google Postmaster Tools — shows your domain reputation as Gmail sees it, if you send meaningful volume.
- Your mail headers — a bounce message often names the exact blocklist that rejected you.
Shared hosting makes this common. On budget hosting, a "neighbour" site on the same IP gets compromised, the IP earns a bad reputation, and your perfectly clean email gets caught in the blast radius. Checking the IP — not just the domain — tells you whether that's what's happening.
How do I do individual vendor lookups and read the results?
When a multi-vendor scan flags a specific vendor, go straight to that vendor's own lookup tool to confirm and read the details. Each maintains a public status page — Norton Safe Web, McAfee SiteAdvisor, Sucuri SiteCheck, Google's Site Status — and these are the authoritative source for whether that vendor lists you and why. Aggregators can lag; the vendor's own page is current.
Reading the result matters as much as running it. Look for three things: the verdict (clean, suspicious, or malicious), the category (phishing, malware, spam, deceptive), and the date of the last scan. A stale "malicious" verdict from weeks ago may simply mean the vendor hasn't re-scanned since you cleaned up — which is exactly when you'd request a review.
What about a "false positive" flag?
Sometimes a vendor flags a genuinely clean site — a new domain, an aggressive script, or a bad automated guess. If you're sure your website or URL is clean, you treat it as a false positive and ask that vendor to re-check. One clarification: this guide covers website and URL flags only. A flagged file or .exe download is a separate antivirus issue with its own dispute process and isn't what these website checkers measure.
VirusTotal aggregates verdicts from roughly 70 antivirus scanners and URL/domain blocklisting services in a single lookup (VirusTotal). Because engines share threat intelligence, a website hack commonly triggers several of these vendors at once, so checking a single scanner often understates the real listing count.
What should I do once I know I'm blacklisted?
Once you've confirmed where you're listed, the path is always the same: clean the site first, then ask each vendor to re-check. Requesting a review while the problem is still live just gets you re-flagged — vendors re-scan, find the same issue, and the clock restarts. There's no shortcut that skips the cleanup.
The painful part is step two across many vendors. A flagged site is often on several lists at once, each with its own form, email channel, format, and waiting time. For Google, that means a manual review in Search Console. For antivirus vendors, it's a dispute form or email — sent to each one, separately.
That's the part unflagdomain handles once your site is clean: after you've cleaned up, it scans to see exactly who's flagging you, then emails every flagging vendor an individual, correctly-formatted removal request — one payment, €39, with your address as the reply-to so responses come straight to you. For the broader cleanup-and-request walkthrough, see how to remove a website from a blacklist.
One honest note: nobody — no tool, no service — can guarantee a vendor will delist you or promise an exact date. The vendors decide. What can be guaranteed is that a correct, complete request actually reaches every one of them. unflagdomain doesn't scan or clean your site; you handle the cleanup, and it makes sure the request lands with each vendor that's blocking you.
Run your domain through a free multi-vendor blacklist checker, which queries the major security databases in one pass. You can [check your domain for free](/blacklist-checker) without signing up. For email problems, also check DNS blocklists like Spamhaus, which protects over 3 billion mailboxes ([Spamhaus](https://www.spamhaus.org/)).
Use Google's public Safe Browsing Site Status page and the Security Issues report in Google Search Console. Safe Browsing protects billions of devices ([Google](https://safebrowsing.google.com/)), so its flag triggers the full-page red warning. The review to clear it is manual — there's no instant button or API.
Flags are often invisible to the owner. A hidden hack may inject spam pages a scanner finds but you don't see, or a customer's antivirus may block you while your browser loads normally. It can also be a false positive on a clean site — see [why your domain is blacklisted](/blog/why-is-my-domain-blacklisted).
Yes. Website blocklists stop visitors; email blocklists (DNSBLs like Spamhaus or Barracuda) stop your messages. A domain can be clean on one and listed on the other. If emails bounce or hit spam, check your domain and sending IP with tools like MXToolbox and Spamhaus separately.
Clean the site first, then ask each vendor to re-check — requesting a review before fixing the issue just gets you re-flagged. Each vendor has a separate channel, so this gets tedious. Once clean, [unflagdomain can email every flagging vendor a removal request](/remove-website-from-blacklist) for €39, with your address as reply-to.