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What is this TXT record? Paste it and find out

You have inherited a zone with a dozen TXT strings in it and no sense of which ones are load bearing. Paste them below, one per line, and each is identified: what it is, which name it belongs on, whether deleting it breaks something, and how many domains carry the same token.

44,285,266 of the 167,692,006 domains with at least one apex TXT record carry a verification token, which is 26.41% of them. The single most widely published one is google-site-verification, on 29,145,803 domains across 855 top-level domains.

The string in front of you is probably one of those. The highest count the September 2026 census found on one domain is 125 distinct tokens, which is what a decade of nobody deleting anything looks like.

Quotes, and the name and TTL columns a DNS panel or a dig answer puts in front, are stripped for you. Nothing you paste leaves this page.

Before you delete one

SPF, DMARC and DKIM records are read on every message and deleting one changes delivery the same day. A verification token is different: it proved ownership once, and some services re-check it on a schedule and quietly drop a feature when it stops resolving. Search the vendor's own admin console for the value before removing it, and remove one at a time.

Two tokens on one domain is ordinary. 5,076,619 domains carry exactly two, which is 11.46% of the ones carrying any. 1,415,503 carry three or more.

The tokens the September census counted

Ranked by how many domains carry each one. The share is against the 167,692,006 domains with at least one apex TXT record, and a token is counted only where at least three domains in the same top-level domain carry it, so smaller per-registry tails are not in these sums.

RankTokenWho writes itDomainsShare of TXT publishersTLDs
1 google-site-verification Google site verification 29,145,803 17.38% 855
2 ms Microsoft 365 tenant marker (MS=) 8,218,984 4.90% 822
3 zoho-verification Zoho 1,547,320 0.92% 693
4 brevo-code Brevo 1,286,721 0.77% 696
5 facebook-domain-verification Meta / Facebook 1,155,312 0.69% 661
6 yandex-verification Yandex 604,935 0.36% 552
7 protonmail-verification 585,717 0.35% 654
8 apple-domain-verification Apple 556,091 0.33% 579
9 apple-domain 540,065 0.32% 612
10 mscid 506,387 0.30% 516
11 _globalsign-domain-verification GlobalSign (underscore form) 491,631 0.29% 546
12 dan-ownership-verification 399,926 0.24% 255
13 nameshift 357,909 0.21% 98
14 abuse-report 328,130 0.20% 270
15 saw-market 323,563 0.19% 134
16 hosting-site 312,007 0.19% 554
17 klaviyo-site-verification Klaviyo 295,763 0.18% 346
18 replit-verify 292,889 0.17% 559
19 mailerlite-domain-verification 280,646 0.17% 438
20 canva-domain-verify 259,638 0.15% 426
21 google-gws-recovery-domain-verification 233,054 0.14% 452
22 openai-domain-verification OpenAI 230,938 0.14% 535
23 atlassian-domain-verification Atlassian 210,679 0.13% 440
24 pinterest-site-verification 190,066 0.11% 409
25 mailconf 177,294 0.11% 200
26 sendinblue-code 142,132 0.08% 403
27 bio 138,562 0.08% 31
28 mailru-domain 119,162 0.07% 288
29 knowbe4-site-verification 114,873 0.07% 285
30 globalsign-domain-verification GlobalSign 112,074 0.07% 367
31 purelymail_ownership_proof 103,870 0.06% 423
32 firebase 103,481 0.06% 420
33 forward-email 94,433 0.06% 219
34 include 94,133 0.06% 346
35 stripe-verification Stripe 92,560 0.06% 381
36 sophos-domain-verification 83,462 0.05% 274
37 adobe-idp-site-verification Adobe 75,223 0.04% 224
38 yahoo-verification-key 72,303 0.04% 235
39 hosted-email-verify 72,282 0.04% 448
40 forward-email-site-verification 71,555 0.04% 352
41 ms-domain-verification 64,773 0.04% 302
42 verification-code-site-app_feishu 64,428 0.04% 189
43 amazonses 58,823 0.04% 281
44 docusign DocuSign 56,684 0.03% 209
45 mailru-verification Mail.ru 55,932 0.03% 207
46 linkedin-site-verification 54,757 0.03% 263
47 rm_verify 51,535 0.03% 260
48 ip4 48,691 0.03% 186
49 tiktok-developers-site-verification 48,345 0.03% 306
50 cargo-domain 47,349 0.03% 146
51 clickfunnels-domain-verification 43,608 0.03% 167
52 sl-verification 42,274 0.03% 349
53 cisco-ci-domain-verification Cisco 41,930 0.03% 226
54 verification-code-site-app_lark 41,672 0.02% 291
55 pcowner 41,453 0.02% 76
56 tmes 37,579 0.02% 188
57 fah-claim 37,409 0.02% 285
58 atlassian-sending-domain-verification 37,183 0.02% 239
59 have-i-been-pwned-verification 35,355 0.02% 237
60 t-verify 35,055 0.02% 351
61 godaddyverification 35,011 0.02% 180
62 duo_sso_verification 33,507 0.02% 166
63 keybase-site-verification 31,371 0.02% 303
64 https 31,065 0.02% 164
65 1password-site-verification 30,821 0.02% 207
66 asv 30,565 0.02% 212
67 slack-domain-verification 28,871 0.02% 217
68 twilio-domain-verification 28,792 0.02% 248
69 canva-site-verification Canva 28,516 0.02% 189
70 domainparking-verification 28,284 0.02% 5
71 domain-verification 25,707 0.02% 179
72 mx 24,064 0.01% 76
73 miro-verification Miro 23,442 0.01% 161
74 sav-verification 23,392 0.01% 33
75 bw 23,251 0.01% 162
76 dropbox-domain-verification Dropbox 23,182 0.01% 116
77 swisssign-check 21,019 0.01% 124
78 caa 20,490 0.01% 43
79 box-domain-verification 20,198 0.01% 139
80 smartsheet-site-validation 19,779 0.01% 120

The tool also knows 5 further tokens the census named outside this ranking, so a paste can match one that has no row above.

Read next

What lives in a DNS zone, and what each part does · SPF: the TXT record that must not be deleted · DKIM: the long string at a selector name

Figures as of 5 September 2026, from the September 2026 edition of the defaults.exposed census. Census numbers move every month; the current values are on the census data page.