What We Check
Turn any inspection finding into the next repair. Every check links to the guide or example that shows what to change, and the table gives its weight and failure class.
Discovery
Can the page be reached at all. Everything else is moot until the answer is yes.
| Check | Weight | Fails as |
|---|---|---|
| Served over HTTPS | 8 | Structural |
| robots.txt is published | 4 | Quick fix |
| This URL is not disallowed in robots.txt | 10 | Quick fix |
| AI crawlers are allowed | 10 | Quick fix |
| Page is indexable | 10 | Quick fix |
| Canonical URL declared | 5 | Quick fix |
| Canonical points at this site | 5 | Investigate |
| Reached without a redirect chain | 4 | Quick fix |
| XML sitemap is discoverable | 6 | Quick fix |
| Server responded promptly | 5 | Structural |
Page Structure
Whether the document has a readable shape or is a wall of styled text with no addressable parts.
| Check | Weight | Fails as |
|---|---|---|
| Title tag is present and usable | 8 | Quick fix |
| Meta description is present and usable | 5 | Quick fix |
| Exactly one H1 | 7 | Quick fix |
| Heading levels do not skip | 4 | Quick fix |
| Page is broken into sections | 5 | Quick fix |
| Page links onward into the site | 6 | Quick fix, or structural at zero links |
| Anchor text describes the destination | 4 | Quick fix |
| Images carry alt text | 4 | Quick fix |
| Mobile viewport declared | 3 | Quick fix |
Entity Clarity
Whether the page states who published it and what it is in a form a machine reads instead of infers.
| Check | Weight | Fails as |
|---|---|---|
| Structured data is present | 10 | Quick fix |
| Publisher is declared as an entity | 9 | Quick fix |
| Entity is linked to outside references | 7 | Quick fix |
| Page type is declared | 6 | Quick fix |
| Structured data uses stable identifiers | 5 | Quick fix |
| Naming is consistent across signals | 4 | Investigate |
AI Readiness
Whether the content is in the response and whether anything can separate it from the furniture around it.
| Check | Weight | Fails as |
|---|---|---|
| Content is in the HTML, not assembled by script | 12 | Structural |
| Page has enough readable text to be useful | 8 | Quick fix, or structural under 80 words |
| Main content is inside a semantic landmark | 6 | Quick fix |
| Body text survives boilerplate stripping | 7 | Quick fix, or structural at very low ratios |
| Document language is declared | 3 | Quick fix |
| Open Graph metadata present | 3 | Quick fix |
| llms.txt published | 4 | Quick fix |
Content Signals
Whether the page answers something and does so in a shape anything can reuse.
| Check | Weight | Fails as |
|---|---|---|
| Opens with a real answer | 9 | Quick fix |
| Claims are specific rather than general | 6 | Quick fix |
| Question and answer structure is marked up | 5 | Quick fix |
| Page carries a freshness signal | 5 | Quick fix |
| Page cites something outside itself | 4 | Quick fix |
| Headings describe their sections | 4 | Quick fix |
What a quick inspection cannot tell you
Use these limits to decide when one page result is enough and when a wider site review is needed. The result covers the requested URL and its root discovery files.
- It cannot see your site. One URL is one URL. The other four thousand pages built from the same template might be fine or might be worse.
- It cannot see your history. There is no Search Console data, analytics, server logs, or record of what crawlers did last month.
- It cannot see competition. A page can score 96 and never be found because better-established pages already answer the same question well.
- It cannot see demand. Nothing in a page-level inspection knows whether anyone needs the subject.
- It cannot execute your JavaScript. That is deliberate because many AI retrievers do not either. A page can look fine in a browser while returning little useful content in its first response.
- It cannot promise an outcome. Fixing every finding makes a page easier to reach and read. It does not promise rankings, AI citations, or traffic.
A quick inspection catches the obvious problems, and the obvious problems are worth catching. It is not proof that the whole system is healthy. Replacing the filter helps. It does not rebuild the engine.