What your score can tell you.

An unintended noindex directive can exclude a public page from search. Its absence only establishes eligibility, not that the page is indexed.

Decision rule: Fail: a noindex or none directive applies to all robots or Googlebot in a robots/googlebot meta tag or X-Robots-Tag header. Pass: none detected on the homepage. This does not test actual indexing, rendered directives, nosnippet, max-snippet, data-nosnippet or engine-specific preview eligibility.

• Google: Block indexing with noindex

A blocked Googlebot cannot reliably fetch the page or see its indexing directives. robots.txt is a crawl control, not a way to secure private content.

Decision rule: Pass/fail: the final homepage path and query are allowed/blocked for Googlebot by the fetched robots.txt. A 4xx response other than 429 means no file restrictions. Network failure, 429 or 5xx means unknown. A missing file does not prove firewall access. We have no crawler cache history.

• Google: Introduction to robots.txt
• Bing: Create a robots.txt file

A descriptive, distinct title helps people identify the right result. Search engines can rewrite titles; there is no required character count.

Decision rule: Pass: every fetched page has a non-empty, distinct title other than Home, Welcome, Untitled or Index (case-insensitive). Partial: that condition fails but the homepage has a title. Otherwise fail. Incomplete page sampling cannot earn a full pass.

• Google: Title links

A clear main heading tells readers what this page is about and gives search engines a prominent title signal. Multiple H1 elements alone are not a ranking violation.

Decision rule: Pass: each fetched page has a non-empty H1 other than Home, Welcome or Logo; on a supporting page it must also differ from the detected business name. Partial: that condition fails but the homepage has H1 text. Otherwise fail. Multiple H1s are allowed. Incomplete page sampling cannot earn a full pass.

• Google: Title links
• Google: Helpful, reliable, people-first content

A consistent canonical helps consolidate duplicate URL signals. It is a hint, and legitimate cross-domain canonicals need human review.

Decision rule: Pass: the first HTML canonical (or, if absent, the canonical Link header) matches the final homepage URL after removing the fragment and trailing slash. Partial: a different canonical is declared. Fail: none found. A missing self-canonical is not a Google violation; Google can choose one itself. Alternate canonicals require human review.

• Google: Canonical URLs

Slow loading, layout shifts and delayed responses can make a page harder to use. Lab measurements diagnose problems; field LCP, CLS and INP describe real visits.

Decision rule: With complete field data: pass when LCP ≤2,500 ms, CLS ≤0.1 and INP ≤200 ms; partial when all are ≤4,000 ms, ≤0.25 and ≤500 ms; otherwise fail. Lab fallback uses only LCP/CLS with the same boundaries and is not a CWV assessment. Missing LCP/CLS (or field INP) is unknown. The separate Lighthouse score is not used in this calculation.

• Google: Core Web Vitals
• Google: Page experience

A page-specific description can explain the offer in search results. Google may choose visible page text instead; the tag does not guarantee a snippet.

Decision rule: Pass: every fetched page has a non-empty, distinct meta description. Partial: that condition fails but the homepage has one. Otherwise fail. We do not assess persuasive quality or enforce a character target. Incomplete page sampling cannot earn a full pass.

• Google: Search snippets

HTTPS protects the connection and is part of a good page experience. It does not establish the accuracy or quality of the business.

Decision rule: Pass: the final homepage URL uses HTTPS. Fail: it remains HTTP. Missing schemes default to HTTPS; we do not downgrade after a TLS failure. Certificate/transport failure prevents a report rather than generating a zero.

• Google: Page experience

Broken links interrupt a visitor’s next step and can obstruct discovery of supporting pages. This small sample is not a sitewide link audit.

Decision rule: Up to eight homepage links, same-origin first, no query strings or obvious action routes. HEAD, then GET only for HTTP 405/501. Any observed 404/410 fails this check. All sampled destinations returning 2xx/3xx passes. A timeout, block, server error or unattempted link is unknown. No eligible links is not applicable.

• Google: Crawlable links

A sitemap can help engines discover canonical pages, especially on larger sites. It neither guarantees indexing nor replaces internal links.

Decision rule: Pass: sampled XML contains urlset or sitemapindex and at least one loc. We try /sitemap.xml, then up to three distinct robots.txt declarations and /sitemap_index.xml alternatives. Fail only after conclusive missing/non-sitemap responses. Blocked, timed-out, oversized, compressed or unattempted resources are unknown. We do not validate all URLs or index coverage. Small, well-linked sites may not need a sitemap.

• Google: Sitemaps overview

Search and answer bots need permission to retrieve content. Allowing them establishes only a robots.txt prerequisite; firewalls, indexing and answer selection can still prevent visibility.

Decision rule: Five equal bot shares: OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Claude-SearchBot, Claude-User and Bingbot. For each, all sampled paths allowed earns 1, some earns 0.5, none earns 0. The 8-point check earns 8 × sum(shares) / 5, rounded to two decimals. Any unknown bot result makes the check unknown. Equal shares are editorial, not engine market share. We evaluate robots rules, not actual requests from those bots.

• OpenAI: Overview of crawlers
• Anthropic: Web crawler controls
• Perplexity: Crawlers
• Bing: Create a robots.txt file

Accurate business markup can clarify which organization a page describes. Detecting a schema type does not validate the markup or guarantee a rich result or AI mention.

Decision rule: Pass: at least one detected type belongs to the bundled schema.org Organization hierarchy and no sampled JSON-LD block fails JSON parsing. Partial: any other schema type, or an organization type with a malformed JSON-LD block. Fail: no recognized types. When supporting pages are unavailable and no malformed markup is observed, absence of an Organization type is unknown. JSON-LD and microdata types are detected, not full schema validity, ownership, sameAs accuracy or RDFa. Markup is optional and does not prove AI visibility.

• Google: Introduction to structured data
• Schema.org: Organization

Readable service, about and contact pages give visitors supporting details and provide crawlable context beyond a homepage. Readability is not a quality verdict.

Decision rule: Select up to three distinct same-origin links without query strings, prioritizing URL tokens faq/questions, about/team, contact/location, then service. Exclude common file downloads and action routes. Pass: all selected URLs return readable HTML, even if aliases resolve to the same page. Any unavailable, robots-blocked or render-dependent page is unknown. No eligible links is not applicable; separate service pages are not required.

• Google: Crawlable links
• Google: Helpful, reliable, people-first content

For a location-based business, consistent name, address and phone help visitors identify and contact the right place. This scan cannot verify external listings.

Decision rule: Applied only when sampled markup establishes LocalBusiness ancestry or an eligible Organization with address and phone. Pass: name, street-address and phone signals occur on one sampled page; otherwise partial. This is co-presence, not entity matching or consistency. Service-area businesses should review applicability and never publish a private address for points. Local status cannot be inferred from absent markup.

• Schema.org: LocalBusiness
• Schema.org: Organization

Question-and-answer formatting is an optional content observation. Useful pages do not need an FAQ; counting questions cannot establish answer quality, relevance or AI citations. No score impact.

Decision rule: Informational, 0 points. Count distinct question headings/summary/dt, structured Questions, or the first 150 server-rendered button/answer pairs (adjacent panel or aria-controls target), with answers of at least 40 characters. Questions require at least 8 characters and a terminal question mark (including full-width), selected Korean question endings, or an explicit Q label. Toggle labels are removed; common marketing/feedback prompts are excluded. Two or more is shown as pass, one as partial, none as not applicable. These are parser conventions, not quality thresholds; language coverage is limited.

• Google: Helpful, reliable, people-first content
• Google: AI features and your website

Authorship is useful where readers expect it, such as advice and articles. A detected name is not verified expertise or an E-E-A-T score, and a homepage or application need not have a byline. No score impact.

Decision rule: Informational, 0 points. Detect a non-placeholder author meta, rel=author/itemprop=author text, an author string or a named Person outside review data; exclude the business name. Presence passes; absence is not applicable. This does not verify a real person, credentials, plain-text biographies or E-E-A-T.

• Google: Helpful, reliable, people-first content

Open Graph metadata describes a page when it is shared. It is useful presentation metadata, not evidence of search ranking or AI visibility.

Decision rule: Informational, 0 points. Pass: og:title, og:description and og:image are all present on the homepage. Partial: one or two. Fail: none. This concerns sharing previews, not ranking.

• Open Graph protocol

On translated equivalents, hreflang helps engines choose the relevant language or region. A single-language site does not need it.

Decision rule: Informational, 0 points. Check up to 30 homepage alternate/hreflang links for a resolvable URL and language-tag shape (or x-default). All pass; malformed values are partial; absence is not applicable. Return links, translated equivalence and language accuracy are not validated.

• Google: Localized versions

llms.txt is a proposal for organizing content for language models. Its presence is not an established inclusion or ranking requirement.

Decision rule: Informational, 0 points. A 2xx, non-HTML /llms.txt longer than 20 trimmed characters is recorded as present. Missing/unusable text is not applicable; fetch errors are unknown. The unofficial proposal is not a search inclusion requirement; we do not validate its format or claim that it increases citations.

• llms.txt proposal