VirusTotal is the go-to link checker for IT teams, marketers and cautious users. You paste a URL and, within seconds, more than 90 security engines tell you whether they consider it safe.
But a VirusTotal link check gives you a list of opinions, not a yes-or-no answer. This guide shows how to run a check properly, read the results like a professional and act when the flagged link is your own.
Key takeaways
- Paste the full URL, including the path, because vendors often flag a specific page rather than the whole domain.
- Check the domain report as well as the URL report, since they can show different results.
- One or two detections from lesser-known engines are often false positives, but they still get links blocked.
- If your own link is flagged, contact the vendor. Rescanning alone will not fix it.
How to check a link with VirusTotal
The basic check takes less than a minute:
- Go to virustotal.com and open the URL tab.
- Paste the complete link, including https:// and the full path.
- Start the scan and wait for the vendor results to load.
- Read the detection score at the top, then scroll through the individual vendor verdicts.
- Switch to the domain report to see the reputation of the domain as a whole.
Never paste links that contain private tokens, password reset codes or customer data. VirusTotal results are visible to its community and to premium subscribers.
URL report versus domain report
A URL report covers one exact address. A domain report covers everything VirusTotal knows about the domain: past URL scans, files downloaded from it, DNS history and the domain-level verdicts of vendors.
It is common to see a clean URL on a domain that is flagged, or the other way round. Email filters and firewalls often check at domain level, so always look at both.
What the results mean
Vendors use different labels. Clean or harmless means the vendor checked and found nothing. Unrated means the vendor has no opinion. Suspicious is a soft warning. Phishing, malicious and malware are hard detections that typically lead to blocking.
The headline score counts only the suspicious and harmful verdicts. A score of 0/94 is clean. A score of 1/94 or 2/94 is often a false positive from an aggressive heuristic engine. Higher scores across well-known vendors deserve serious investigation.
When the flagged link is your own
If you run the link checker on your own website and it comes back red, do not panic, but do not ignore it either. Even one detection can mean newsletters land in spam, corporate visitors are blocked by their firewall and ad platforms reject your landing pages.
Start by finding out why. Check for injected scripts, unexpected redirects and outdated plugins. If the site is genuinely clean, you are dealing with a false positive, and the vendor needs to hear that from you. Our article on what to do when one vendor flags your domain explains the next steps.
Getting a false positive removed
Every vendor listed on VirusTotal runs its own dispute process. Some have a web form, some only accept email and a few require an account. You will need to explain what your site does, show it is clean and ask for a review. The VirusTotal false positive removal guide lists the details, and our evidence checklist shows what to include.
Alternatively, start a case with us. We file the requests with every vendor involved and keep checking until the link scans clean.
Frequently asked questions
Is the VirusTotal link checker free?
Yes. Scanning URLs on the website is free. Automated and commercial use requires a paid API plan.
Can I trust a link with 1 detection?
Usually it is a false positive, but check which vendor flagged it and which label it used. A phishing label on a login page deserves a closer look.
Why does my link show different results each time?
Vendors update their databases continuously, and a rescan picks up their latest opinion. Results can also differ between the exact URL and the domain.
Does VirusTotal share the links I check?
Submitted URLs and their reports become part of the VirusTotal dataset and can be seen by other users, so avoid submitting private links.