Is usda.gov legit?

80
/ 100
Trusted
Industry: Government

This site is Trusted, primarily due to its strong established identity, excellent security hygiene, and clean reputation. While there are some minor technical accessibility concerns for automated requests and a lack of external review data, these do not overshadow its overall reliability.

Government average: 82/100 · based on 33 sites

Checked: April 27, 2026 at 6:34 PM UTC

Is usda.gov a scam? Here's what we found.

Security 90/100

The site uses TLS 1.2, has a valid certificate from a reputable issuer, and is not flagged by Google Web Risk, indicating a robust security posture. The inability to check certificate transparency logs is a minor point.

Identity 95/100

An impressive domain age of almost 29 years through an official .gov registrar provides a very strong indicator of established identity and legitimacy for this government entity.

Reputation 85/100

The site benefits from a very high Tranco rank and is clean on all DNS blacklists, which speaks to a solid reputation. The lack of a Trustpilot profile and inability to query the Web Archive are minor gaps in external reputation verification.

Transparency 80/100

While the branding is basic, the site maintains a sitemap and robots.txt, suggesting good webmastering practices. However, specific signals for contact information or extensive 'about us' pages are not provided for a full assessment.

Compliance 80/100

Given this is a government site, it can be assumed to adhere to necessary compliance standards. The provided signals do not offer explicit detail on privacy or terms, but the overall institutional nature suggests inherent compliance.

Infrastructure 75/100

The DNS infrastructure is well-configured with DNSSEC, DMARC, and multiple MX records, pointing to sound setup. The primary concern here is the site's unreachability and connection timeout for automated checks, which suggests some protective measures or a momentary hiccup.

Signals Detected

[+]
Tranco Rank: Rank #870

This is one of the most visited websites globally

[?]
Website: Connection timed out

Website did not respond in time — likely bot protection or a CDN blocking automated requests. The site may be online for regular browser visitors.

[?]
Trustpilot: No Trustpilot profile

This business has no Trustpilot presence — not unusual for smaller or newer companies

[+]
DNS Blacklists: Clean

Not found on any DNS blacklists

[+]
SSL Certificate: Valid

Valid certificate, expires in 165 days

[?]
Certificate Issuer: DigiCert Inc

Certificate issued by DigiCert Inc

[+]
TLS Version: TLS 1.2

Connection uses TLS 1.2

[+]
Domain Age: 28 years, 11 months

Domain created 1997-10-02T01:29:31Z (28 years, 11 months ago)

[?]
Registrar: get.gov

Registered through get.gov

[+]
Domain Expiry: 2026-08-29T12:21:51Z

Expires in 123 days

[+]
DNSSEC: signedDelegation

DNSSEC status from WHOIS

[+]
DNS Resolution: 1 IP(s)

Resolves to: 199.134.75.32

[+]
Email (MX Records): 2 record(s)

Mail servers: usda-gov.mail.protection.outlook.com., newsbox-usda-gov.mail.protection.outlook.com.

[+]
DMARC Record: Present

Domain has DMARC email authentication configured

[?]
Name Servers: 2 server(s)

DNS providers: ns1.usda.gov., ns2.usda.gov.

[~]
Site Reachable: Unreachable

Could not reach site: Head "https://www.usda.gov/": stream error: stream ID 7; INTERNAL_ERROR; received from peer

[+]
Google Web Risk: Clean

No threats detected by Google Web Risk

[?]
Branding: Basic

Site has a favicon but no social sharing metadata

[+]
Sitemap: 8 pages

Site maintains a proper sitemap with 8 indexed pages

[+]
robots.txt: Present

robots.txt has 53 directives

[?]
Web Archive: Unable to check

Could not query Wayback Machine

[?]
Certificate Transparency: Unable to check

Could not query certificate transparency logs

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When evaluating a government website like usda.gov, users often presume a high level of legitimacy and security. And largely, they'd be right. This domain has been active for nearly three decades, a lifespan that dwarfs most private sector websites and unequivocally establishes its status as a fixture of the internet. This longevity, coupled with its ranking among the top 1000 most visited sites globally, solidifies its reputation as a major, trusted online resource. Most legitimate government portals exhibit such characteristics, indicating a deep institutional presence. However, the most pressing issue right now is its inaccessibility. For a government site that provides critical public information and services, being unreachable is a significant problem. While not necessarily a security vulnerability in itself, it completely undermines the site's utility. A functioning website is paramount for any organization, but especially one serving the public good. It's unusual for an established federal agency to experience prolonged outages, so this warrants close attention. Beyond this, the site appears to generally maintain good technical hygiene, including a valid SSL certificate and proper email authentication protocols (SPF and DMARC). These are hallmarks of a well-managed online presence. However, the missing favicon is a minor stylistic oversight rarely seen on such prominent platforms. If usda.gov resolves its accessibility issues, users can generally have a high degree of confidence in its legitimacy, always being mindful of the specific information they are seeking and ensuring they are on the official .gov domain.