Identify technologies on websites | Wappalyzer

Description Wappalyzer

Wappalyzer is a browser extension that helps collect information and identify software used to build a specific page. Otherwise, it’s a tool that allows you to spy on the technology a site is built on. Formerly, it necessary to be an expert and to know to the letter all the characteristics of a CMS to be able to identify that from which a site is built. But today, thanks to tools like Wappalyzer, all you have to do is click to discover the technologies used to create a website. The tool allows you to see all technologies like plugins, dating app, even SEO tools used by a competitor website. The advantage is that you can use this information to outperform your competitors who offer the best services and rank high in the SERPs. So let’s see in this description how you can use this tool to your advantage.

What is Wappalyzer ?

Wappalyzer is a tool that helps webmasters detect up to 80 popular content management systems, servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools and many more. Wappalyzer is designed to work with almost all major web browsers. The tool owes its popularity to its performance, efficiency, and speed as a free online option.  Wappalyzer currently counts:

• On Chrome, more than 1,000,000 users and 1860 4.6 star ratings;
• And over 93,000 users on Firefox with 291 5-star ratings granted.

Wappalyzer can be used from the command line or through a browser extension of your preference.  It analyzes a particular web application and extracts interesting data such as used software components. It can use headers and HTML code as one of the sources to get the information. The main downside of this tool is that it is used by some ethical hackers to find out the easiest attack they could try on a website.  Obviously, it will be more convenient for them to attack a website when they know the different technologies used on which the website is built, mainly the programming language used and the framework.

How to use Wappalyzer?

The tool can be used in two different ways, you can use it directly from the platform or download the extension for the browser of your choice.

• From the Platform

Using Wappalyzer from their portal to spy on other websites is the easiest thing you can do. If you want to use the free version of this tool, no prerequisites are required. Except that the information will be really limited and you will have to pay 9 dollars/MB to obtain more complete information. To get started, you just have to paste a site address into the search bar on the site. Then the tool will provide you with all the software, plugins and other technologies that the submitted website uses.

• On Google Chrome

The best way to use this tool is to add the extension to your browser and here we are going to add it to Google Chrome. For that, you need to go to the website and scroll down to find the tools Wappalyzer works with. At this point, you just have to click on Chrome to go to the Chrome store to add the extension to your browser. Once the extension is added to your browser, visit a website and click on the Wappalyzer icon to find out what software it uses. As an example, we will search on Google for ”SEO definition” then click on the first website that appears.  Once on the page, we will click on the icon of our tool to discover the information we are looking for. We can therefore see that the site uses: WordPress as a Content Management System;

• MySQL as database;
• Lesk as server manager;
• Google Tage manager as Tag manager;
• Etc.

As on the website, to have more information than what we have, you have to upgrade to the paid version of the tool.

• On Firefox

As we have just done for chrome, you must also go to the site to click on the symbol of FireFox in order to land in their store. Once you’re in the store, click the Add to Firefox button. As you can notice, a message appears at the top left of the page indicating that the add-on is being downloaded. At this point, you need to click on the ”Add to Firefox” button to add the Wappalyzer add-on to your Firefox browser.  Once you have installed the extension, you will be shown an Installation successful message. So you can start by testing and exploring competing websites in your industry.         After installation, you just need to browse the website you want to spy on Mozilla Firefox browser.  Once on the site page, click on the Wappalyzer tool icon to the right of the address bar and the technologies used for the website will appear automatically. Now that you can see the technologies used for the website, it is better to hide them if you are the owner of the website so that attackers do not have an idea of ​​the most effective attack they can use for your website. In general, Wappalyzer is both a free and a paid tool that you can use to spy on other websites in your niche. It would be even more interesting if you combine Wappalyzer with another SEO tool, this will allow you to win the competition. On the other hand, if you try the tool on your own website and it allows you to read all this information, it is advisable to try to hide it. This will make you avoid attacks, as this information can lead to vulnerabilities that hackers can exploit when they want to harm you.