129 checks, and what each of them is for.
Every check declares two things about itself: how it was decided, and who is allowed to fix it. Both are visible wherever a finding appears, because a finding you cannot interrogate is just an assertion.
The eight categories
Weights are the proportion each category contributes to the overall score. They add to 100%, and they are not equal: content quality carries twice what page experience does, deliberately.
| Category | Checks | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Technical foundation & indexability | 20 | 15% |
| Crawling, rendering & site structure | 16 | 10% |
| Search appearance | 18 | 10% |
| Content quality & helpfulness | 18 | 20% |
| E-E-A-T & trust signals | 15 | 15% |
| Site content health & cannibalization | 14 | 10% |
| AI / answer-engine readiness (GEO) | 16 | 12% |
| Page experience & performance | 12 | 8% |
| Total | 129 | 100% |
How a check is decided
"Our AI found an issue" is not a finding. Every check states its method, so you can tell a fact from a judgement before you act on it.
Rule
A deterministic fact about the page. Present or absent, no judgement, reproducible by anyone.
Graph
Computed across the whole crawled site: reachability, overlap, depth. Cannot be answered from one page.
API
Measured by an external source. If that source is unavailable, the check is unmeasured, never a pass.
Model
Assessed by a language model, and labelled as such everywhere it appears so you can weigh it accordingly.
Who is allowed to fix it
- Auto: the engine produces the change. One correct answer exists.
- Assist: the engine drafts, a person decides. The shape is clear, the content is a judgement.
- Human: only a person can decide. The engine reports and stops rather than guessing convincingly.
The categories in detail
Each category has its own page covering what it looks for, what commonly fails, the conditions under which its checks return unmeasured, and where to start if it scores badly.
Whether an engine can reach the page and is permitted to keep it.
20 checks · 15% of the score Crawling & structureWhether the content is in the HTML, and whether the site hangs together.
16 checks · 10% of the score Search appearanceWhat the result looks like once you have earned one.
18 checks · 10% of the score Content qualityWhether the page answers the thing it appears to be about.
18 checks · 20% of the score E-E-A-T & trustWhether there is anything here to trust or attribute.
15 checks · 15% of the score Content healthWhether your own pages are competing with each other.
14 checks · 10% of the score Answer-engine readinessWhether an AI answer can lift your content and credit you for it.
16 checks · 12% of the score Page experienceWhether the page is usable once it arrives.
12 checks · 8% of the scoreA note on what is listed here
The checks above are representative of each category, not a transcription of all 129. The category names, counts and weights are the live catalogue; the individual checks are shown to convey what a category contains and how its checks are decided.
A browsable page per check (one indexable page for each of the 129, each answering the query someone actually types) is on the roadmap and is not built. This page says so rather than presenting a partial list as a complete one.
Core Web Vitals, specifically
Shipped: LCP, INP, CLS. Not shipped: FCP, TBT, Speed Index, accessibility score. The full Lighthouse set is not claimed anywhere on this site, because not all of it runs.