Finding the publisher of the website seems an easy task? Right! But sometimes it becomes challenging to find this simple piece of information.
Are you struggling to find the publisher of the website? This step by step ‘How to find the publisher of a website’ should help.
I have tried to keep this guide precise and efficient for everyone, so let’s just dive in.
Table of Contents
How to find the publisher of a website?
Check copyright text
Generally, all websites put copyright information in the footer section of the website.
Scroll to the bottom of the page and look at the information listed there. Read this information to see if it provides an original date of publication.
Generally, the publisher’s name is after the copyright statement.
For example, take our website’s footer.
So after copyright text, it mentions the name of the company maintaining the website. So, in this case, ‘ABC Company’ is the publisher of the website.
About us page and privacy policy
If the publisher’s name is not in the copyright section, the next section should check About us.
You can typically find ‘about us’ section link in the header or footer of the website.
As ‘about us’ is where the website owner will mention what this website is about and what purpose it serves. Generally, it contains information from the publisher.
If there is no direct ‘About Us’ link in header and footer, see all pages on the website and see if there is an ‘About Us’ or ‘Meet the team’ section.
Check social media accounts for the publisher information
So if the publisher is not mentioned in website pages, you can check the official social media handles of the website.
It should not be difficult to find social media pages of the website. Generally, the sites give their social media links, and if they have not, you can search for their social media handles on social networks.
Social media pages of the website generally have an ‘About’ section, and you can find details of the publisher.
Check WHOis Record for domain details.
Whois is a widely used Internet record listing by ICANN, that identifies who owns a domain and how to contact them. So whenever someone registers their domain with any domain registrar, they must identify and contact information like name, address, email, phone number, administrative and technical contacts.
So, if searching on website pages and social media pages did not work, checking who is a database can help get the publisher’s name.
WHOIS is publicly accessible to everyone, and using it is easy.
But it might not always work. As when someone registers the domain, if the user chose to keep this information private, then WHOIS will now show the details, and it would not work.
So open WHOIS lookup and enter domain to check details if details are not private, you can see Registrant organization name.
The above result is a WHOIS lookup for Neil Patel’s blog, which shows Registrant Organization details.
Check source code for the publisher’s name.
We have tried finding publisher details on the website, and it did not work, so publishers have not mentioned it on the website for some reason.
They might have used some plugins to hide it or might have deliberately not have added it. But maybe it can bein the source code since most of the websites optimize their markups for better SEO.
To check if the website’s markup is optimized, and it has publisher details. To check if its markup was optimized, check its structured data with Google structure data markup tool. and check if the Website’s structure data has publisher details.
So if the website’s markup tags were used correctly to optimize content, it might have publisher detail.
If it does not work, and this information is not in the structured data, you can check the source code for the articles and try to find publisher details. To check the source code of the website, use ‘ctrl + U,’ which will open HTML code for the site in the new tab.
Here is a snapshot for the source code for thelearningpanda, and a quick search for a publisher in source code shows the publisher meta tags. It has publishers details tag in source code.
Check author info for articles
Even if publisher is not mentioned in copyright and About us pages. You can check if article/blog on website mentions ‘Author details’ at the top or below post.
If its a blog chances are that author can publisher of the website, if there are posts with different authors, you can check active authors on the website and contact them for publisher details.
Publisher information in the press release
Website’s keep publishing press release as it helps them to get better search engine rankings.
Any press releases increases search engine presence for the website and helps them to brand themselves and targetted so users know more about the brand.
So if you do a quick search for press release with website name and you can find press release link, chances are high that you will get the publisher details.
Subscribing to the newsletter/opt-in forms
Everyone uses those modals to collect Emails. Right? So if this website has a popup or some other way to collect your email, opt for newsletter.
Next step generally is that website publisher will send a welcome email with their offers and and a bit information about the website. So chances are that publisher details will be in the email or email signature at the end.
Even if it is not mentioned, you can reply to the mail and ask for the publisher details.
If you face any issues in following steps or have some feedback for us, just let us know in the comments.