Health Score
The health score is a single number from 0 to 100 that represents your website's overall quality. It provides a quick way to assess site health and track improvements over time.
How the Score Works
The health score starts at 100 (perfect) and subtracts penalties based on detected issues. The algorithm considers:
- Issue severity - Critical issues have more impact than advisory ones
- Issue category - Some categories (like crawlability) affect the score more than others
- Diminishing returns - Many instances of the same issue type have progressively less impact
Score Ranges
| Score | Status | What It Means |
|---|---|---|
| 80-100 | Healthy | Your site is in good shape. Address any remaining issues for a perfect score. |
| 50-79 | Needs Attention | Multiple issues exist that should be addressed. Prioritize critical issues. |
| 0-49 | Critical | Significant problems are affecting your site. Immediate attention recommended. |
Scoring Algorithm
Category Weights
Each issue belongs to a category with a maximum penalty it can contribute to the score:
| Category | Max Penalty | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Crawlability | 30 points | Issues preventing search engines from accessing content |
| Content Quality | 20 points | Duplicate or missing content elements |
| User Experience | 20 points | Broken links, images, and errors |
| SEO Best Practices | 15 points | Meta tags, headings, structured data |
| Security | 15 points | HTTPS, headers, mixed content |
| Performance | 10 points | Compression, caching, and delivery quality |
| Technical Health | 10 points | Robots.txt, sitemap, redirects |
| Accessibility | 10 points | Alt text, heading structure, lang |
| Modern Standards | 5 points | Compression, caching, favicon |
Severity Multipliers
Issue severity affects how much each issue counts toward the category penalty:
| Severity | Multiplier | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Critical | 1.0x | Full impact on score |
| Caution | 0.6x | Moderate impact |
| Advisory | 0.3x | Minor impact |
Diminishing Returns
The algorithm uses logarithmic diminishing returns within each category. This means:
- 1 critical issue ≈ 30% of the category's max penalty
- 3 critical issues ≈ 60% of the category's max penalty
- 10 critical issues ≈ 100% of the category's max penalty
This ensures that:
- A single mistake doesn't destroy your score
- Systemic problems (many issue types) score worse than localized ones
- Large sites aren't unfairly penalized for having more pages
Category Breakdown
Crawlability (30 points max)
The most heavily weighted category because these issues can prevent search engines from finding your content entirely.
Includes:
- Missing page titles
- HTTPS errors
- Robots.txt blocking important pages
Content Quality (20 points max)
Problems with your actual content that affect how search engines understand and rank pages.
Includes:
- Duplicate titles across pages
- Duplicate meta descriptions
- Missing meta descriptions
User Experience (20 points max)
Issues that directly impact visitors trying to use your site.
Includes:
- Broken internal links (404s)
- Broken external links
- Broken images
- JavaScript console errors
- Spelling errors
SEO Best Practices (15 points max)
Optimization opportunities that help search engines better understand and rank your content.
Includes:
- Heading structure issues (missing H1, improper hierarchy)
- Canonical URL issues
- Structured data errors
- Missing Open Graph tags
- Sitemap issues
Security (15 points max)
Security issues that affect user trust and browser warnings.
Includes:
- Mixed content (HTTP resources on HTTPS pages)
- Missing security headers
Performance (10 points max)
Delivery and page efficiency metrics.
Includes:
- Missing compression
- Missing cache headers
Technical Health (10 points max)
Technical configuration issues.
Includes:
- Redirect chains (multiple hops)
Accessibility (10 points max)
Issues affecting users with disabilities.
Includes:
- Missing alt text on images
- Missing lang attribute on HTML
Modern Standards (5 points max)
Best practices for modern web development.
Includes:
- Missing favicon
Ignored Issues
Issues you mark as Ignored or False Positive are excluded from the health score calculation. This lets you acknowledge issues that don't apply to your situation without them affecting your score.
Improving Your Score
- Fix critical issues first - They have the highest impact
- Address diverse issues - Fixing issues across different categories improves your score more than fixing many issues in one category
- Run regular scans - Track your progress and catch new issues early
- Use scheduled scans - Automatically detect regressions
Score History
Auditoro tracks your health score over time, allowing you to:
- See trends in site health
- Identify when issues were introduced
- Measure the impact of your fixes
- Demonstrate improvements to stakeholders