Build signatures

Give PublicWWW a set of websites, and it finds code that lets you find more websites like them: the platform they are built on, a theme or plugin, a tracker, the network or company behind them. Each result is a ready signature - one click searches for it.

How to run it

Make a cluster - from a search (the Cluster button above the results) or from a list of websites you upload - and press Signatures: the fingerprint icon in the row of the cluster on the clusters page, or the Signatures button above the list with the cluster ticked. The signatures page opens: it says which domains were looked at, and below them lists the signatures, best first.

Best first: the signatures that best tell the websites of the cluster from all other websites come first.

An AI assistant can do the same through the MCP tool build_signatures, and then search for what it found. From code it is /v1/clusters/{id}/signatures. Both need a paid plan.

Reading the table

• Signature - the code itself, as it appears in the page source. Search for it as written: it is an exact phrase. When the code belongs to a technology we know, its name is shown next to it.
• In the cluster - how many of the websites looked at have this code. Start from the top: the list is ordered best first.
• Websites, approx. - a rough count for the whole index. The search gives the exact number.
• Search - opens the results for the signature, ordered by popularity as any search.

Websites with the same code, without your own

Search for the signature and save the results as a cluster with the Cluster button. On the clusters page select the new cluster and yours and press New - Old: what is left are the other websites with the same code. Through MCP and the API it is combine_clusters with diff, the new cluster first: [new, yours].

What works best

• A cluster of websites that have something in common - saved from one search, or a list of sites you know belong together: the customers of a product, the sites of one publisher, the shops on one platform.
• A mixed cluster gives little. When nothing ties the websites together, the page says so and lists nothing.
• Check a signature before relying on it, as any query: read the code under its results, at the start of the list and at the end - see Checking a signature.

On the website, building signatures is available on every account, the free one included, and does not use up searches or extraction points. Searching for a signature is an ordinary search.