SiteMind Open

Domain research tool targeting media planners and reseaerchers, specifically built for countering ad fraud and reducing its impact on media investment. Returns a result with up to 40 signals for any site typically in 1-3 seconds.

FEATURE HIGHLIGHTS

  • intuitive ‘buy score’ system for website rating
  • search any domain
  • returns result usually in 1 to 2 seconds
  • up to 150 data points per site from 5 different sources
  • easy to use API with ready end-points for all common languages

OVERVIEW OF FUNCTION

SiteMind allows two different kinds of searches to be performed by the user:

  • type-1: where a single domain name is the input
  • type-2: where a comma separated list of domain names is the input

In both cases the system performs a series of operations resulting in up to 40 signals, which are then stored in a .csv file. Depending on the type of search, the result will then be returned either as a simple user interface, or a table with results for multiple sites.

SITEMIND SCORING SYSTEM

The SiteMind scoring system takes widely accepted “red flags” from signals available from various data sources (see the sections below) and creates a single easy to understand score out of those flags.

The formula to calculate the score ranging from 0 to 100 is as follows:

100 - ((CHECKS FAILED / CHECKS TOTAL) * 100) = SiteMind SCORE

The score consist of 10 “flags”.

VARIABLE NAME FAILS WHEN
SCORE_CHECKS Not enough signals to perform 4 checks
SCORE_UPSTREAM More than 90% of the traffic coming from TOP5 Upstream
SCORE_UPSTREAMCHECK No common sites in TOP5 Upstream
SCORE_TRUST Web of Trust Trust score is less than 50
SCORE_TOPKEYWORDS More than 90% of the traffic coming from TOP5 Keywords
SCORE_SEARCH Less than 1% of traffic is coming from search
SCORE_PAGEVIEWS More than 8 pageviews per visit on average
SCORE_YEARS Domain was originally registered less than 2 years ago
SCORE_PRIVACY Domain uses whois privacy guard
SCORE_BOUNCERATE Site bouncerate is less than 10% on average

DATA TAXONOMY

The below table shows all the signals that are currently available through SiteMind. All variables are available through the scan function in the resulting .csv file, or in the user interface resulting from a single site search.

NOTE: Different naming may be used in the user interfaces, and this is easily changed.

VARIABLE NAME is the name of the variable as it is found in the output file resulting from a search of scan.

SOURCE is the reference to where the data is originating from. In the case the filed says ‘sitemind’ it means that the signal is inferred from other data.

COLUMN NUMBER is only for development purpose and is used in the UI codes to to present a certain signal in a given place in the user interface.

VARIABLE NAME SOURCE COLUMN NUMBER
SCORE_CHECKS sitemind 2
SCORE_UPSTREAM sitemind 3
SCORE_UPSTREAMCHECK sitemind 4
SCORE_TRUST sitemind 5
SCORE_TOPKEYWORDS sitemind 6
SCORE_SEARCH sitemind 7
SCORE_PAGEVIEWS sitemind 8
SCORE_YEARS sitemind 9
SCORE_PRIVACY sitemind 10
SCORE_BOUNCERATE sitemind 11
ADMIN_CITY whois 12
ADMIN_COUNTRY whois 13
ALEXA_BOUNCERATE alexa 14
ALEXA_INLINKS alexa 15
ALEXA_LOADSPEED alexa 16
ALEXA_PAGEVIEWS alexa 17
ALEXA_RANK alexa 18
ALEXA_SEARCHVISITS alexa 19
ALEXA_TIMEONSITE alexa 20
ALEXA_TOPCOUNTRIES alexa 21
ALEXA_TOPKEYWORDS alexa 22
ALEXA_UPSTREAM1 alexa 23
ALEXA_UPSTREAM1N alexa 24
ALEXA_UPSTREAM2 alexa 25
ALEXA_UPSTREAM2N alexa 26
ALEXA_UPSTREAM3 alexa 27
ALEXA_UPSTREAM3N alexa 28
ALEXA_UPSTREAM4 alexa 29
ALEXA_UPSTREAM4N alexa 30
ALEXA_UPSTREAM5 alexa 31
ALEXA_UPSTREAM5N alexa 32
CHECKS_TOTAL alexa 33
CHECK_FALSE alexa 34
CHECK_TRUE alexa 35
TOP5_UPSTREAM alexa 36
WHOIS_PRIVACY whois 37
WHOIS_YEARS whois 38
WOT_CHILDSAFETY weboftrust 39
WOT_TRUST weboftrust 40

DATA SOURCES

While adding virtually any additional data soruce, SiteMind relies on three different data source by default.

  • Alexa
  • Web of Trust
  • WHOIS

ALEXA*

It is recommended to use the paid Alexa API. SiteMind uses web scraping method by default for demo and prototyping purpose.

Web of Trust

Web of Trust data is fetched using the WOT API, which provides a rich data taxonomy and is free to use to a substantial level of daily usage.

More information on the WOT API can be found here: https://www.mywot.com/wiki/API

You can apply for your own API key here: https://www.mywot.com/en/reputation-api

WHOIS

SiteMind provides a fully automated method for the “gold standard” way of fetching WHOIS records.

  1. Gets to main record from the tld level registar including the registar that holds the sub-record
  2. Gets the sub-record from the holding registar

PROCESS FLOW

  1. User provides input through the search field in the UI
    • > form_process.php
    • > run.sh
  2. run.sh checks if there query is empty, single domain, or multiple comma separated domains
    • > sitemind.sh (“controller”)
  3. Regardless if it’s single or multi search the program cycle proceeds
    • > bin/api-fetch.sh
      • > bin/alexa_data.sh
      • > bin/whois_data.sh
      • > bin/wot_data.sh
        • > wo_data.py
  4. Using the data in various .temp and .bash files a usable data format is created
    • > bin/api-build.sh
  5. The data is provided in a comma separated format for multi searches
    • > data-export.sh
  6. The data is further formatted for the UI building process
    • > data-cms.sh
  7. The UIs are built each in a separate script
    • > cms/cms-scorecard.sh
    • > cms/cms-traffic.sh
    • > cms/cms-overview.sh
    • > cms/cms-upstream.sh
  8. A finish cleanup is performed
    • > finish-cleanup.sh

DIRECTORY STRUCTURE

NOTE: In a multi-user system, each user has a self-contained replica of the program folder in the program root.

FOLDER  
/ Sitemind program root
/bin Where non UI scripts reside
/cms Where the UI scripts reside
/cms/graphics Images for the UI
/cms/js Javascripts for the UI
/cms/style Style sheets for the UI
/cms/templates Header and Footer for UI

GETTING STARTED

The following installation instructions have been tested on Ubuntu 16.04 clean distro.

Install dependencies:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y apache2
sudo apt-get install -y php5
sudo apt-get install -y unzip
sudo apt-get install -y parallel
sudo apt-get install -y num-utils
sudo apt-get install -y git

Getting the source files and setting it up:

wget https://github.com/SiteMindOpen/SiteMind/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
sudo rsync -av ~/SiteMind-master/ /var/www/html

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html && chmod -R g+rw /var/www/html

After the initial setup, as long as you create new users with SiteMind command line command ‘sm-user-new’, permissions will be handled automatically and is not something you need to think about.

Creating an admin user:

PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 20); htpasswd ./etc/apache2/.htpasswd -cbB admin "$PASSWORD"; echo -e "Your password is $PASSWORD";

Restart apache

Ubuntu 14.04:

service apache2 restart

Ubuntu 16.04:

systemctl apache restart

HTTPS WITH LETSENCRYPT

Letencrypt makes it incredibly easy (and fast) to setup functional https for your site.

Note that for the below to work, you need to have a valid domain name that is pointed to the server you’re initiating the below command from:

sudo git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt /opt/letsencrypt
cd /opt/letsencrypt
./letsencrypt-auto --apache -d yoursite.com

NOTE: as part of the setup process, there will be a prompt asking if you want to redirect all requests to https. I think this should be on for most cases.

DEBUGGING

For DATA related debugging change production_version to debug_function from line 24 in bin/api-fetch.sh. This will help you to identify issues with one part of the data fetching cycle getting stuck. This should happen very rarely as it has been debugged a lot.

For UI related download the program folder to a local machine and run a PHP server locally. This way you will very easily see any error messages that are coming up when the UI is loaded.

If you’ve setup properly, then you can easily see related error logs on the server-side using:

./sm-monitor

RUNNING LOCALLY

You have to run a PHP server from the Sitemind folder to be able to make queries from the UI:

php -s http://127.0.0.1:8000

If you’re a mac user, go the Sitemind folder and exexcute the below command:

sudo php -S 127.0.0.1:8000 && /Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --app="http://127.0.0.1:8000/dev/index.html" --window-size="1000x800"

Alternatively you can run from the command line (in the Sitemind folder):

./run.sh domain.com

CODING CONVENTIONS

The code is almost 100% bash and certain principles have been followed where possible:

  • code starts one tab intend deep
  • each script (.sh file) represents a step in the process flow
  • no more than 50 lines of code per script
  • no more than 50 characters long lines of code
  • functions first, program second, cleanup last
  • mininal comments - instead self-explaining code

It should be very easy for anyone with beginner+ level in bash to modify the code that is already there, to add new code to improve current functionality, or add completely new functionality.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

  • Create setup process where server is configured including SSL and a conf file is created at ~/.sitemindrc
  • Make upstream sites clickable (yields a new search)
  • Check for native advertising being a major source of traffic
  • Add a 30 day cache to avoid redundant searches
  • Make one-page report for export available with all the signals
  • time-limited account creation

ADMIN FEATURES

In the environment of the host machine, include the following alias commands:

alias sm-sync='/var/www/html/admin/bin/sync.sh'
alias sm-user-list='cat /etc/apache2/.htpasswd | cut -d: -f1'
alias sm-monitor='/var/www/html/admin/bin/monitor.sh'
alias sm-user-new='/var/www/html/admin/bin/user-new.sh'
alias sm-user-rm='/var/www/html/admin/bin/user-sh.sh'
alias sm-commit='/var/www/html/admin/bin/commit.sh'
alias sm-commit-version='cd ~/git/sitemind && /var/www/html/admin/bin/commit-version.sh'
alias sm-commit-log='git log --oneline --decorate --color'
alias sm-conf-nossl='vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf'
alias sm-conf-ssl='vim /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default-le-ssl.conf'
alias sm-find-file='/var/www/html/admin/bin/sm-find-file.sh'

Usually you can find the file from ~/ under the name .bashrc. Add the above lines in to the file and next time you login to the host, the following commands will be available anywhere in your system:

In a Linux system you can do this typically by:

vim .bashrc

sm-sync

Syncs all the user accounts with /dev.

sm-user-list

Prints out a list of user accounts.

sm-monitor

Creates a report out of access and error logs from the on going day’s logs.

sm-user-new

Creates a new user in to the system and prints out a randomly generated password for the user.

EXAMPLE USAGE (where we want to create a user ‘john’:

sm-newuser john

sm-user-rm

Removes a user and all associated files from the system (Use with caution!).

SERVER CONFIGURATION

sm-conf-nossl

Opens up the no ssl (port 80) apache configuration file in vim editor.

sm-conf-ssl

Opens up the ssl (port 443) apache configuration file in vim editor.