What it looks like
A site operated from Germany, or selling to German customers, with no Impressum link in the footer; or one that leads to a page with a company name and nothing else: no address, no responsible person, no register number, no email. Sometimes the link is there and opens a 404.
Why it gives a page away
German law (§ 5 DDG, formerly § 5 TMG) requires every commercial site to name its operator, a postal address, an email address and, depending on the business, register and supervisory details, reachable in two clicks from every page. A generated site skips it because the model does not know the law and the owner did not check. It is only a medium tell because honest sites that have not met a lawyer yet skip it too, but for a law firm, a clinic or a shop it is a trust failure and a legal one, with fines and competitor warnings as the consequence.
How to check your own site
Click your own Impressum link from the deepest page on the site. It must open, name a person or company with a street address and an email, and match what the register says. Then check the Datenschutzerklärung link next to it; the two travel together.
What a designer would do instead
Write it once, correctly, and link it from every footer. The Impressum is the one page on a German site that proves a real business stands behind the rest; designed sites treat it as a feature, not a chore.
When it is not a tell
A purely private page with no commercial purpose, or a site outside the law’s reach. The entry checks where the business sells before it ticks this one.
Sources
Other tells in trust and identity
- A team that does not exist: An "Our team" section with generated portraits and names, or stock people presented as staff, for a business that is one person.
- Logos of companies that never heard of them: A "Trusted by" row of Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Netflix logos on a six-week-old company with no case study.
- No address, no phone, no name: No physical address, no phone number, no named person anywhere, only a form that may or may not work.
- Social links to the platform home page: Footer icons for X, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook that link to x.com, linkedin.com and instagram.com, not to any account.
