Web Filtering Taxonomy

The 59 Web Filtering Category Taxonomy

Every domain in the 120M+ URL Categorization Database carries these 59 web filtering labels alongside its IAB categories. The taxonomy below is the complete reference — from web-based risk and adult labels through business, communication, lifestyle and infrastructure classifications — grouped exactly as they appear in the dataset.

Adult & Sensitive Material Business & Financial Services Community & Communication Government & Everything Else Infrastructure & Technology Lifestyle & Everyday Interests Productivity & Time Management Web-based Risk Categories

Adult & Sensitive Material

Age-restricted labels assigned when explicit, wagering or regulated-substance content dominates a domain.

Adult

Domains classified from explicit on-page material, adult keywords in metadata and age-gate signals — porn sites, cam platforms and adult entertainment networks.

Alcohol

URLs of breweries, distilleries, wine shops and drinks brands; product catalogs and promotional copy for alcoholic beverages drive the classification.

Dating

Matchmaking apps and dating sites, identified by profile-browsing flows, match-and-swipe language and relationship-seeking signup funnels.

Gambling

Betting operators, online casinos, poker rooms and lottery domains; odds tables, wagering vocabulary and gaming-license notices are the defining signals.

Lingerie/Swimsuits/Intimate Apparel

E-commerce catalogs devoted to underwear, swimwear and intimates — suggestive but non-explicit product imagery separates these URLs from Adult.

Tobacco

Sites selling or promoting cigarettes, cigars, vaping and smokeless products; nicotine-related terms and tobacco storefront listings trigger the label.

Business & Financial Services

Commercial, financial and e-commerce classifications covering how sites sell, trade and transact.

Advertising/Marketing

Ad-tech networks, tracking endpoints and agency or martech sites, classified from ad-serving paths, campaign tooling and marketing-focused copy.

Business

General corporate presences: company homepages, B2B providers and consultancies whose pages describe services and clients rather than a niche vertical.

Cryptocurrency

Exchanges, wallets, DeFi apps and token projects; wallet-connect prompts, coin tickers and blockchain terminology are the classifying signals.

Financial Services

Insurers, brokers, lenders, fintechs and market-data sites — pages dense with rates, portfolios, policies and regulated-finance disclosures.

Job Search/Careers

Job boards, recruiting agencies and CV builders; listing structures with salary, location and apply buttons place a URL in this bucket.

Marketplaces / Classifieds / Auctions

Multi-vendor selling platforms, local classifieds and bidding sites — listings from many independent sellers, not one storefront, define the class.

Online Banking

Login-gated retail and business banking portals; account-access flows and transaction features distinguish these URLs from broader Financial Services.

Real Estate

Property portals, brokerages and rental sites; address, square-footage and price-per-listing structures are the strongest classification features.

Shopping

Single-brand and general online retailers across every product vertical — cart, checkout and product-page schema mark the domain.

Community & Communication

Labels for sites built on publishing, discussion and person-to-person messaging.

Blogs/Personal Sites

Individual-author blogs, portfolios and personal homepages, typically on blogging platforms or personal domains with dated post archives.

Community Sites

Interest-based member communities plus fan and hobby hubs where user-generated contributions make up most of the indexed pages.

Email and Messaging

Webmail providers and chat or instant-messaging platforms; login-to-inbox flows and messaging endpoints mark these domains.

Forums / Message Boards

Threaded discussion boards and Q&A sites — thread-and-reply URL patterns and forum-software footprints drive the classification.

News/Media

Publisher and broadcaster domains with dated articles, bylines and section structures — from national outlets down to local news sites.

Political

Party sites, campaign pages, advocacy groups and partisan commentary; election and policy-position language is the key signal.

Government & Everything Else

Civic and military classifications plus the fallback label that guarantees full dataset coverage.

Government & Legal

Official portals, courts, regulators and law-firm sites; statutes, filings, public-service content and government TLDs define the class.

Military

Armed-forces branches, defense ministries, contractors and veteran organizations, recognized via defense terminology and official military domains.

Other

The catch-all 59th label, applied to reachable sites whose content matches no other category with confidence — so every domain still gets a tag.

Infrastructure & Technology

Technical classifications for the platforms, tooling and plumbing behind the web.

AI / LLM Tools

Chatbot front-ends, generative-AI apps and model providers; prompt interfaces and AI-product language place a domain here.

CDN / Hosting / Infrastructure

Content-delivery endpoints, cloud platforms and hosting providers — often subdomain-heavy infrastructure URLs serving assets rather than pages.

Computers & Technology

Tech publications, hardware vendors, IT-service firms and software company sites covering computing topics broadly.

Developer Tools / Code Hosting

Git hosting, package registries, CI services and API documentation portals; repository and docs URL structures are strong signals.

Freeware/Software

Download portals and software catalogs distributing free or trial applications — installer links and version listings define the label.

Parked / For-Sale Domains

Registered but unbuilt domains showing registrar placeholders, ad-parking templates or for-sale landers; template fingerprints drive detection.

Search Engines & Platforms

General and vertical search services plus major multi-product platform portals whose core function is query-driven retrieval.

Web-based Applications

Browser-delivered SaaS tools — dashboards, editors, converters and utilities where the URL is an application rather than a content page.

Lifestyle & Everyday Interests

Consumer-interest labels spanning health, learning, leisure, travel and daily life.

Arts & Entertainment

Movie, music, TV, celebrity and event sites; media titles, reviews and show listings are the classifying content.

Automotive & Transportation

Car makers, dealerships, parts shops and transit services — model pages, vehicle listings and spec sheets mark these URLs.

Education/Reference

School and university domains, encyclopedias, dictionaries and study resources built around instructional or reference material.

Food & Drink

Recipe collections, cooking blogs, food brands and beverage sites; ingredient lists and recipe markup are typical signals.

Health & Medicine

Hospitals, clinics, pharma brands and condition-reference pages, classified from medical vocabulary and health-service content.

Home & Garden

DIY guides, furniture and decor retailers, landscaping firms and home-improvement resources.

Pets & Animals

Veterinary practices, pet-supply stores, breed guides and animal-welfare organizations.

Religion & Spirituality

Churches, mosques, temples, faith organizations and spiritual-teaching sites, keyed on worship and scripture-related content.

Restaurants & Dining

Individual restaurant sites plus reservation and delivery platforms — menu, location and opening-hours pages define the class.

Science

Research institutes, academic journals and popular-science publishers; papers, datasets and technical explainers are the core content.

Sports & Recreation

League and club sites, scores-and-fixtures pages, fitness services and outdoor-activity content.

Travel

Airlines, hotels, booking engines and destination guides; itinerary, fare and reservation content drives the classification.

Webinars/E-learning

Online course platforms, MOOC providers and webinar hosts — enrollment flows and lesson or module URL structures signal the label.

Productivity & Time Management

Entertainment and sharing categories that admins typically schedule or throttle rather than block outright.

Cloud Storage / File Hosting

Personal cloud drives and file-hosting services; shared-file link patterns and upload or download endpoints identify these domains.

File Sharing/P2P

Torrent indexes, P2P trackers and file-swapping sites, recognized by magnet links and peer-network references.

Gaming

Game studios, storefronts, browser games and esports sites; game titles, patch notes and play-now content classify the URL.

Podcasts

Podcast networks, episode pages and audio-show hosting platforms with RSS feeds and episode-listing structures.

Social Networking

Profile-and-feed platforms where users follow and share; social-graph features and user-generated feeds are the defining signals.

Streaming Media

Video and music streaming domains — embedded players, watch or listen URL patterns and licensed or user-uploaded media catalogs.

Web-based Risk Categories

High-risk labels assigned to threats, anonymizers and content that most filtering policies block outright.

Hate/Discrimination

Sites hosting supremacist, extremist or targeted-harassment material; slur density and group-directed hostility drive the classification.

Illegal Drugs

Marketplaces and promotional pages for controlled substances and paraphernalia, flagged from drug names, dosage talk and sale offers.

Remote Access Tools

Domains serving remote-desktop and remote-administration software or their relay endpoints — a frequent bypass channel in intrusions.

Restricted / Suspicious

URLs carrying malware, phishing kits, scam patterns or negative reputation flags from our scanning pipeline; blocked by default in most policies.

URL Shorteners

Redirect services whose links conceal the final destination; the shortener domain itself carries the label since payloads vary per link.

Violence

Gore, graphic violence and content glorifying attacks or terrorism, identified from violent imagery and explicit descriptive text.

VPN / Proxy / Anonymizers

Consumer VPN vendors, web proxies and anonymization gateways used to route traffic around network filtering rules.

Weapons

Firearm dealers, ammunition shops and weapon-modification guides; product listings and caliber or spec terminology are the signals.

License the database with all 59 categories included

Every plan of the URL Categorization Database ships with the complete 59-label web filtering taxonomy on 120M+ domains, alongside IAB classifications — available as a downloadable dataset or through the real-time API.

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