Scoring rubric

How is a score computed?

The scan runs 104 checks, grouped into 21 modules. Each check returns a pass, a partial pass or a failure, and carries a severity from 1 to 5. A pass counts 1, a partial pass 0.5 and a failure 0.

• Category value: category_value = 100 * sum(status_factor * severity) / sum(severity), over scored findings only.
• Axis score: score = sum(category_value * weight) / sum(active weight).

Two outcomes are left out of the calculation in both directions, so they neither penalise nor credit a site:

needs api

an API we did not connect — never counts as a pass and never penalises; report the count

not applicable

the check does not apply to this site

Active only when their signals are detected. An inactive category leaves the denominator entirely and the remaining weights re-normalise, so a blog is never penalised for having no Product schema.

Search SEO: categories and weights

How well the page is set up to rank in classic search engines. The weights sum over the active categories only, and re-normalise when a conditional category does not apply.

AI Visibility: categories and weights

How extractable and citable the page is for AI answer engines (GEO/AEO). The weights sum over the active categories only, and re-normalise when a conditional category does not apply.

Why are the two scores never combined?

The two scores are never combined into one number. Two scores are published side by side and never averaged into one. A site can rank well and be uncitable by AI, or the reverse; collapsing that hides the finding we are paid to surface.

When is a score withheld?

Each axis reports how much of its rubric weight the scan could actually measure. Below 70% of that weight, we compute the number but do not publish it, and the report names the categories that could not be assessed. A score built on a fraction of its rubric would look precise and describe a different rubric from the one on this page.

What caps a score?

A failure at severity 5 means the site cannot be indexed or reached at all, so nothing else on the report can take effect while it holds. Any such failure in an axis means that score is capped at 40, band F. The cap only ever lowers a score; it never raises one.

M14: AI1 is this axis's severity-5 trigger. It fires only on the site-wide condition — every retrieval crawler refused, or a robots.txt that does not respond — which is the same evidence T13 reads for the search axis, assessed for its own consequence rather than borrowed from T13's.

What do the letter grades mean?

A published score maps to a letter band by its lower bound, with one adjustment: 8 or more open findings move it down by one band, and 12 or more open findings move it down by 2 bands. The score itself is unchanged.

What does each severity mean?

What does each module not cover?

14 of the 21 modules are not yet built to the full depth the rubric describes. What each one does not examine is stated here, and in every report that relies on it, rather than left for a reader to infer from a number.

Which checks are run?

All 104 scored checks, with the module each scores under, the axis it counts toward and its severity.

Which checks are reported but not scored?

21 further checks appear in a report's appendix and contribute zero points. Reported in the appendix, contributing zero points. Two standing reasons: the check encodes a convention of ours rather than a property of the client's site, or it returns data rather than a verdict. A check may fault a site for being inconsistent with its own declared intent, never for disagreeing with ours. A third, temporary reason: a new check is reported for one cycle of client data before it scores (O11, since 2 October 2026).

What is the rubric based on?

Published guidance from the search engines and the standards bodies, not guesses about ranking factors. Rubric version 0.3.0, check map version 0.2.0.

• Google Search Central, SEO starter guide
• Google Search Central, introduction to robots.txt
• RFC 9309, the Robots Exclusion Protocol
• The schema.org vocabulary
• web.dev, Core Web Vitals