Web Content Categorization Criteria
FortiGuard URL Database Categories are based upon the Web content viewing suitability of three major groups of customers: enterprises, schools, and home/families. They also take into account customer requirements for Internet management.
The categories are defined to be easily manageable and patterned to industry standards.
77 categories are organized into the following 8 main groups:
(Click on the group name link to see category descriptions)
| Groups |
Categories |
| Potentially Liable |
Child Abuse, Drug Abuse, Folklore, Hacking, Illegal or Unethical, Marijuana, Occult, Phishing, Plagiarism, Proxy Avoidance, Racism and Hate, Violence, Web Translation |
| Controversial |
Abortion, Adult Materials, Advocacy Organizations, Alcohol, Extremist Groups, Gambling, Lingerie and Swimsuit, Nudity and Risque, Pornography, Sex Education, Sports Hunting and War Games, Tasteless, Tobacco, Weapons |
| Potentially Non-Productive |
Advertising, Brokerage and Trading, Digital Postcards, Freeware Downloads, Games, Instant Messaging , Newsgroups and Message Boards, Web Chat, Web-based Email |
| Potentially Bandwidth Consuming |
Internet Radio and TV, Internet Telephony, Multimedia Download, Peer-to-peer File Sharing, Personal Storage |
| Potential Security Risks |
Malware, Spyware |
| General Interest |
Arts and Entertainment, Child Education, Culture, Education, Finance and Banking, General Organizations, Health and Wellness, Homosexuality, Job Search, Medicine , News and Media, Personal Relationships, Personal Vehicles, Personal Websites, Political Organizations, Real Estate, Reference, Religion, Restaurant and Dining, Search Engines, Shopping and Auction, Society and Lifestyles, Sports, Travel |
| Business Oriented |
Armed Forces, Business, Government and Legal Organizations, Information Technology, Information and Computer Security |
| Others |
Content Servers, Dynamic Content, Miscellaneous, Secure Websites, Web Hosting |
Each category contains websites or web pages that have been assigned based on their dominant Web content.A website or webpage is categorized into a specific, likely to be blocked category according to its content. When a website contains elements in different categories, web pages on the site are separately categorized.
Descriptions of the categories above are designed to assist the reader with category comprehension only;they are not meant to depict any form of symbolic representation of the individuals who own or surf these sites.
Web Filtering Database Classes
In addition to categorizing webpage content into one of the 77 categories, the FortiGuard Web Filtering service further classifies the web pages based on media types or sources. Similar to categorization, this classification enables our customers to further refine the Web access management. Customers will have the capability to block offensive materials such as porn images, by preventing the finding of such materials in the first place.
The classification process sorts the website or web pages into one of the following classes:
| Class | Description |
| Cached Contents | Web pages that are stored or cached in a second website, generally a search engine website |
| Image Search | Websites providing search of images or photos, or the results of image or photo searches. |
| Audio Search | Websites providing search of audio clips or the results of audio searches. |
| Video Search | Websites providing search of video clips or the results of video searches. |
| Multimedia Search | Websites providing mixed search of images, photos, audio and video materials or the results of such searches. |
| Spam URL | Websites or web pages whose URLs are found in spam emails. These web pages often advertise sex sites, single clubs, and other potentially nuisance or offensive materials. |
| Unclassified | This class includes all other web pages that do not fall into one of the above classes, includes regular Web searches and others. |
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