You have probably landed on one without realizing it. The site loads fast, the layout is clean, the fonts are tasteful. But something feels off. The copy sounds like a press release. The testimonials have no last names. The About page could describe literally any company in the industry.
That feeling is not random. It comes from a site being vibecoded: generated by an AI tool, lightly prompted, and shipped without anyone really looking at it.
Once you know what to look for, you will spot them in seconds.
The copy sounds like it was written for no one in particular
Vibecoded sites consistently use the same phrases. "Empowering teams to achieve more." "Seamless solutions for modern businesses." "Trusted by thousands of users worldwide."
None of those sentences say anything. They read like a LinkedIn post written by someone who has never met a customer. AI writing models are trained on marketing copy, so they produce more marketing copy. It comes out smooth and completely hollow.
Real companies write things like: "We help dentists fill their schedule without cold calls." That level of specificity is hard to generate because it requires knowing something true about the business.
The testimonials are suspiciously vague
Look at the social proof section. A lot of vibecoded sites have testimonials that read: "This product changed how we work. Highly recommended." Signed by "Michael T., Product Manager."
No company name. No specific outcome. No full last name. A real customer testimonial usually mentions something concrete: a result, a number, a before-and-after. The vague ones were either never written by real customers or were generated and lightly edited.
Check the testimonial photos too. Reverse image search them. If they come back as stock photos, that tells you what you need to know.
The CTAs do not actually work
Click every button on the page. This is the fastest test. On vibecoded sites, a notable share of CTAs either go nowhere, open a generic contact form, or loop back to a page you already visited.
The "Get started" button links to pricing. Pricing has a "Contact us" button. Contact has a form that submits to nowhere. The whole funnel is scaffolding with no plumbing behind it.
The footer is stuck in time
Check the copyright year. If it says 2024 and it is now 2026, no one has touched this site since it launched. Real companies update their footers. Vibecoded sites get shipped and forgotten.
While you are in the footer, check the links. Privacy policy, terms of service, cookie notice: do they actually go anywhere? Many template-generated sites include these links by default but never fill in the content.
The images could be from any website
Stock photos have a recognizable aesthetic. Everyone is photographed in a studio. The office has floor-to-ceiling windows and no one at their desk. The team photo has people of perfectly calibrated diversity all looking at a laptop and smiling.
Real company photos are rougher. They were taken at an actual office or at an event. The lighting is inconsistent. Someone is squinting.
You can also check the image URLs. Unsplash, Pexels, and Getty have recognizable URL patterns. If every image on the site is hosted at images.unsplash.com, draw your own conclusions.
No real author anywhere
Vibecoded blog posts often have no author listed, or they are attributed to "The [Company] Team." Real blog posts, even at large companies, tend to have a named person.
When there is an author, search for them. If the author of a detailed technical post has no LinkedIn profile and no other writing anywhere online, the post was almost certainly generated.
The About page says nothing specific
A real About page tells you who built the product and why. It mentions a founder, a frustration, a specific moment when the idea came together.
A vibecoded About page says: "We are a team of passionate professionals dedicated to delivering innovative solutions that help businesses succeed." True of every company ever founded. True of no company in particular.
If you cannot tell what the company actually does, who runs it, or why it exists after reading the About page, it was generated.
Checking automatically
Going through all of this by hand takes time. SiteBlob runs a forensic scan against any public URL and surfaces these signals automatically: placeholder text, stock image CDNs, dead CTAs, stale copyright years, generic testimonial patterns, and 800+ other checks. Each finding links to the exact HTML location so there is no guesswork.