Reading Your Dashboard
Reading Your Audit
Your audit opens on a score, and the rest of it sits behind a row of links across the top of the page. This goes through those links in order — what each part is telling you, and which part to act on first.
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Where Your Report Is, and What Is in It
A free audit arrives as a link in your email. On Pro, open Audits from the menu down the left of your dashboard and pick a month out of the Every Audit table — the month itself is the link.
Either way the report opens on the same thing: a score dial, a few lines beside it saying what we read, and then a row of links across the page. That row is the report. It is not one long page you scroll — each link opens a different part of it, and the part you are reading is the one with a line under it:
- Overview. The score, what we read, and Priority Fixes — up to ten findings, the ones costing you the most, in order.
- Issues. The section headed Everything We Found: every finding on the site, A to Z, with a search box.
- Pages. The section headed Page by Page: every page we read, with its own score, weakest first.
- Categories. The section headed How the Score Breaks Down: one bar for each subject that scores.
- Already fine. Every check that passed, listed in full and kept away from the ones that did not.
- What we didn’t check. Two lists — what we could not reach an answer on this time, and what no reading of your pages can answer at all.
A monthly audit that has an audit before it carries one more link, Changes. A first audit does not, because there is nothing yet to compare it against.
The Score at the Top
The dial is one number out of 100 for the whole site. It is the weighted average of the 11 subjects that score, minus anything found working against you, and it exists to be compared with itself over time rather than with anybody else.
Underneath it is the number of pages read. If your site is bigger than the 250 pages an audit covers, the report says so in a box before anything else — everything below is true of the pages we read, and it is not all of them.
How It Works goes further on the weighting, and on why some subjects count for more than others. The one thing worth knowing while reading the report: a subject we could not check at all is left out of the average rather than scored zero, so the number never punishes you for something we failed to reach.
Priority Fixes
The first list is the only part of the report you have to read: the findings that would win back the most points, largest first — the size of the problem multiplied by how much that subject counts.
A small problem in a heavily weighted subject can come out above a bigger problem in a light one, which is not the order you would guess. Working straight down the list is the fastest route to a better site; picking the ones that look easiest is not.
Every item says what we found on your site, and opens up: what the check looks at, why it matters, the evidence, and the fix written out — do it yourself, or forward it to whoever looks after your site. Nothing in the list is a finding you then have to go and research.
How the Score Breaks Down
Next is one bar per subject, each with a sentence saying what that subject is about. This is the section for the question “where is my site actually weak”, as opposed to “what should I do on Tuesday”.
A subject scoring badly with nothing in the fix list above usually means many small problems rather than one large one. A subject scoring well with an item in the fix list means one serious problem in an otherwise healthy area. Each bar opens a view of exactly the findings that produced its score, and the findings list and page table each have a small search box for jumping straight to one check or one page.
Site-Wide Findings and Page Findings
The report separates two genuinely different kinds of finding, and the distinction is the main reason a full audit tells you things a single-page check-up cannot.
- A site-wide finding
- One fact about your website as a whole, or about the relationship between pages — two pages sharing a title, a link that leads nowhere, a page nothing links to, a missing sitemap. It appears once, because it is one problem however many pages it touches.
- A page finding
- One fact about one page — this page has no main heading, this page's summary line is missing. It appears with the list of pages it was found on.
Both kinds sit together in Everything We Found — one list, A to Z so any check is easy to find, each entry naming the pages it touches. Checks that passed are kept out of the way in a collapsed section called Already Fine, and anything we could not reach an answer on has its own section too, so a problem never sits next to a pass.
Page by Page lists every page we read with its own score, weakest first, which is where the work is — and each row opens that page’s own view: everything found on it, everything fine on it, and a link to visit the live page. Under each problem in the findings list, the affected pages are listed with what we found on each, and “all pages” opens that problem’s own view. Both views have their own web address, so you can send one straight to whoever looks after your site. Use a page’s view when you are fixing a page, and a problem’s view when you are fixing a problem.
Occasionally the same underlying defect is counted under more than one name — a heading problem is both a fact about that page and a fact about your whole site. Where that happens the report says so, so three lines do not read as three separate problems.
What “What We Didn’t Check” Holds
The last link in the row, What we didn’t check, opens two lists. They are kept apart because they are two different admissions:
- Couldn't Check This Time
- Checks that ran on your site and could not reach an answer. Nothing is being claimed about them either way, none of them counts toward your score, and a fresh audit tries again.
- Worth Checking Elsewhere
- Things that matter and that no reading of your pages can ever answer — whether your Google Business Profile is claimed, for one. We can tell you they matter and how to check each one yourself; we cannot tell you the answer.
Neither list is scored and neither is counted as checked. They look different from the rest of the report on purpose: drawn like everything else they would read as findings, and a finding is something we verified.
If a Finding Looks Wrong
Findings are produced by reading your pages, and a page can be read wrongly — a checkout that hides its content behind a login, a page built in a way our reader misunderstands.
If a finding reads unclear, or looks wrong, or the instruction does not match what you are looking at, tell us. That is how these descriptions get better for everybody. Subscribers can write from the Help page inside the dashboard, where the message arrives from the account already verified; everyone else can use the contact form.
Common Questions
Is a Score of 70 Good?
There is no pass mark, and we deliberately do not publish one — a number that means "good" would be a number to aim at rather than a description of your site. The useful reading is the direction it moves in after you fix things, and which subjects are pulling it down.
Why Did My Score Change When I Changed Nothing?
The most common cause is that we read a different number of pages — a site that grew, or a page that was slow to answer on the day. The report says how many pages it covered, and comparing that number between two audits usually explains the difference.
Does the Free Website Audit Give Me This?
Yes. The free website audit reads your whole site, so everything above — site-wide findings included — is in its report. It is the same audit Pro re-runs each month.