What we check
Every check in the report, what it means, and why it matters. If a check does not change what you would do next, it is not in here.
Can Google read your site
Crawling instructions
Every site can leave Google a short note saying which parts to read. If that note is missing, broken, or accidentally says stay away from everything, it affects the entire site at once. It is the first thing worth ruling out.
Your page list
Most sites hand Google a list of every page they have. Without one, Google finds your pages by following links and guesswork, and pages that are harder to reach can go unnoticed for months.
Content present before the design loads
We request your homepage the way Google does and check whether the words are actually there. Some sites send a nearly empty page and paint the content in afterwards. Google can wait for that and often does not.
Links Google can follow
Search engines move through a site by following links. If your menu only exists once the page has loaded, your other pages are effectively invisible no matter how good they are.
Does the site work for real people
Loading speed on a phone
We use Google's own measurements, based on real visits where enough of them exist. Most people give a page around 3 seconds. Every second past that is people leaving before they see anything.
Whether the page jumps while it loads
When buttons move as a page settles, people tap the wrong thing. It is a small irritation that costs a surprising number of enquiries on phones.
Secure address
Browsers put a warning on sites without one, and a good share of visitors leave the moment they see it.
Does Google know you are local
Business detail Google can read
Sites can hand Google a tidy summary of who they are, where they are and what they do. Having it is a real advantage in the map results, where most local searches are decided.
Phone number and address on the page
These are trust signals for people and location signals for Google. When they only appear inside an image, neither gets the benefit.
Pages for services and areas
Local searches are specific: one service, one suburb. A site with a handful of pages can only ever answer a handful of those searches.
Your live map results
We check 49 points across a 5km area and record where you appear at each one. This is the part most owners find genuinely surprising.
Does the site do you justice
The line that shows in search results
It is the first thing anyone reads about you and often the only thing they compare you on. Too long and Google cuts it off partway through.
The summary underneath it
2 lines of free advertising directly under your name. Left empty, Google fills them with whatever text it finds first, which is sometimes a cookie notice.
Headings and content
Google cannot rank a page it cannot read, and a visitor cannot choose you over a competitor if the page does not tell them anything.
What we deliberately left out
There is a whole category of things that are easy to measure, look impressive in a report, and change nothing about what you should do on Monday. We left those out on purpose.
We also include a small section on whether your business gets named when someone asks an assistant for a recommendation in your area. We label it as indicative rather than a ranking, because those answers vary from one run to the next and from one person to the next. We will not sell you a package to fix it, because the things that influence it are mostly the same things that influence Google, which are already covered above.
If you want to see the process end to end, the how it works page walks through it. Otherwise you can run your report now.