How Google categorizes your domain

It is being retired. After abandoning the third-party cookie phase-out, Google announced the removal of the Topics API: deprecation with Chrome 144 (January 2026), full removal planned with Chrome 150. The document.browsingTopics() function will be removed. Rankit Topic keeps its value as an educational tool: it illustrates a classification mechanism still instructive for SEO and GEO.

No, and this is key. Google's documentation states topics are hand-curated for the most visited sites worldwide: for those domains, Chrome reads a mapping list, not the model. The machine-learning model only handles other domains. Rankit Topic faithfully reproduces both levels: it integrates Chrome's official list (45,268 domains, exact result, green badge) and, for any domain absent from that list, its engine estimates the topics (orange badge). Every result therefore clearly states whether it comes from the curated list or from an estimate.

For the 45,268 domains in Chrome's official list, yes: Rankit Topic shows the exact result, integrated from that Google-curated list. For any other domain, Rankit Topic estimates the topics by rebuilding the model logic (hostname tokenization, voting against the taxonomy). The real model is a TensorFlow Lite file not reproducible without the file itself: the estimate is reliable, but not a bit-for-bit copy. Each result clearly states its source: exact or estimated.

The domain name only, never page content, which is a privacy choice of the Topics API. Rankit Topic splits the name into tokens (for example boutiquevelo yields boutique and velo), then each known token votes for taxonomy topics.

An opaque or made-up domain name contains no recognizable word. Neither Chrome's model nor Rankit Topic can then reliably attach it to a topic.

No. Rankit Topic makes no network call: the classification runs entirely on the Rankit server, in a few milliseconds, without contacting Google or any third party.

Yes, and it is even recommended. Chrome includes a built-in tool that shows the Topics API classification. On Chrome for desktop, copy chrome://topics-internals/ into the address bar, open the Classifier tab, then enter a hostname. For a domain in the official list, you will find exactly the result shown here. This tool only exists on Chrome desktop and will disappear when the Topics API is removed.

Chrome's official list is single and worldwide: it contains the most visited sites on a global scale, across all languages. Sites from any single country are therefore a minority, by simple proportion. A mid-sized website is very likely absent from it and handled by the estimation engine: this is not a flaw, it is the nature of this list. Only the very largest sites appear in the global list.