How a SiteCandor Audit Works
We read your website and score it out of 100, using 51 checks grouped into 12 subjects. This page shows you what we check on each subject, how the scoring works, and the three things we keep private — with the reason for each.
What we sell
What SiteCandor Is, and What Each Service Costs
SiteCandor reads your website and tells you, in plain English, what is actually wrong with it and what is already fine — and this page shows you exactly how, check by check.
Free Website Audit — $0
We read your whole site, up to 250 pages, and email you a report. Every finding comes with the fix written out in plain English — do it yourself, or forward it to whoever looks after your site. No account, no card.
Pro — $88 a month
Every month we re-run the full audit and show what changed. Every day we check your Google rank for 50 searches and your key pages. Every week we ask AI assistants about you. You also get competitor analysis, keyword research and recommendations. Cancel any time.
From a Real Report · Demo Site
What Your Report Actually Looks Like
This is one finding from a real report, exactly as the report shows it — the problem named in your words, and why it matters underneath.
Pro — $88 a month
Where You Rank in Google, Checked Every Day
You choose up to 50 searches that matter to your business — “emergency plumber tacoma”, “boiler repair near me”, whatever your customers actually type. Every day we look up where your website appears in Google’s results for each one, searched from your area rather than ours, and record the position.
The trend is what you see first: which searches you are climbing for, which you are slipping on, and which you have never appeared in at all. Rankings move on their own, so one day tells you little and a month tells you plenty — the daily numbers are there when you want them.
What a SiteCandor Audit Looks At
Here is what we look for in each of the 12 subjects.
Can Google find you at all?
Google has to be able to find your pages and read them. We check whether anything on your site is telling Google not to read it, and whether your sitemap is complete. We also check whether your old web addresses still lead somewhere.
Do your titles say what you actually do?
We read the title and description that show up in search engine results. Then we check whether they match what you actually sell and how people are searching for it. We flag pages that share a title, and titles too long to show in full or too vague to say what the page is about.
Does the page read like a document or a pile of text?
We check that your headings run in a sensible order and describe what is under them. That is what lets a visitor skim the page, and what tells a search engine what the page is about. We check things like does the page have one main heading rather than five, and do the smaller headings sit underneath it in order.
Does the page answer what buyers ask?
What the page says is what decides whether someone calls you. We check whether it answers the questions buyers ask first: what it costs, how the work goes, and why they should trust you. We flag pages too thin to answer anything, and pages that never mention price at all.
Are you writing about what people search for?
Your trade has its own words, and your customers rarely use them. A dentist writes restorative dentistry; the person looking for one types “chipped tooth repair”. We check whether the page is written in the words a customer would type, and whether two of your pages are competing for the same search instead of one winning it.
Do your links go somewhere useful?
We follow every link on your site and report the ones that lead nowhere. Then we look at where the working links actually send people. The pages that make you money should be easy to reach from anywhere on your site, and we tell you when they are not.
Can your images be read and do they slow you down?
Every photo needs a short written description. A blind visitor hears it read aloud, and it is how a search engine knows what the picture shows. We check whether your images have one, and whether any are too large, slowing your page down.
Can a machine read your business details?
Your page can carry a summary written for machines to read: your hours, prices, location and reviews, in a format every search engine understands. We check whether yours is there, and whether it matches what visitors see on the page.
Is it obvious where you are?
If you serve a town or an area, we check that your name, address and phone number are easy to find. We also check they say the same thing on every page, because one of them changing in a redesign is easy to miss. If that is not how your business works, we skip this rather than score you on it.
Is it fast, and is it secure?
We time how quickly your page loads and how much a visitor has to download to see it. A slow page loses people before they read a word. We also check that every page is served securely, so no browser warns a visitor away from you.
Can AI read your website?
ChatGPT, Claude and other AI tools send out their own readers to fetch pages. Plenty of sites block them from the day they are built, so the owner is turning AI away without ever choosing to. We check whether yours are let in, and whether what they find is easy for an assistant to quote.
Is anything on the page working against you?
A few things on a website cost you points instead of earning them. We look for text hidden from visitors but left for search engines, the same keyword repeated over and over, and pages built only to catch searches rather than help anyone. This is usually the work of whoever built the site, not yours, and it is still costing you until it goes.
Run a Free Website Audit on Your Own Site
The free website audit reads your whole site and lands in your inbox. No account, no card.
How the Audit Score Works
Each Subject Is Scored On Its Own
Every check either passes, is worth a look, or fails. Each subject is then scored from its own checks, so you can see where the problem actually is, instead of one number standing in for the whole site.
Some Subjects Count for More Than Others
Whether Google can find you at all counts for more than whether your images have descriptions. We weight each subject by how much it actually affects a small business, not by how easy it is to measure.
One Subject Takes Points Off Your Score
One subject takes points off instead of adding them: anything on your page that is working against you. Hidden text, pages built only to catch searches, and one word repeated over and over cost you points, never more than 10 out of 100.
Advisory Items Are Named, Never Scored
Some things matter but cannot be answered by reading your pages — whether you have claimed your Google listing, for one. We name those in your report with instructions for checking them yourself, and leave them out of the score.
You should be able to answer one question: is my website doing its job? The checks find the answer. The score sums it up. The plain English is so you can act on it.
What an Audit Can’t Check From Outside Your Site
We score what is on your website. Things that live somewhere else — inside Google, or on other people’s sites — are invisible to us, so we name them, tell you how to check them yourself, and leave them out of your score.
What We Verify
We check everything your page itself shows
If it is in the words, the pictures or the code of your page, we can read it, so we check it and score it.
We check the files that sit alongside your pages
A few small files — your robots.txt, your sitemap — are published openly for search engines to read. We read the same ones, so nothing here is guesswork.
What We Can’t — and Say So
We cannot see whether you have claimed your Google Business Profile
That is the listing showing your hours, photos and reviews in Google Maps. It lives inside Google rather than on your website, so we name it in your report and tell you how to check it yourself.
We cannot see your backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. They sit on other people’s sites, so your own pages do not list them. Companies sell that data; we would be reselling a guess.
How We Measure Whether AI Assistants Mention You
When someone asks AI “who’s the best plumber in Tacoma”, either your business comes up in the answer or it doesn’t. We ask those questions on a schedule and record what comes back.
Every week you get the questions we asked, the answers that came back, whether your business was named, and which businesses were named instead. It is evidence you can read yourself, not a score we hand down. This is part of Pro — $88 a month, cancel any time.
The Questions Are Yours, and We Ask Five AI Assistants
Write the questions your customers would ask, or add ones we suggest from the keywords you track, phrased the way a customer would type them. We only ask the ones on your list.
Up to 30 questions, edited by you
Your dashboard suggests a question for each keyword you track, and you add the ones you want, up to 30. “Emergency plumber in Tacoma” becomes “who is the best emergency plumber in Tacoma?”, because nobody talks to a chatbot in search terms.
Asked weekly, not daily
AI answers change slowly from week to week, so weekly is the honest pace. Asking more often would just bill you for noise.
Asked from your town, version recorded
Every question is asked as though from the town your customers are in, and we record which version of each assistant answered — these products change without warning.
Five surfaces, checked every week
We ask ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity directly through each company's own connection, keeping every answer word for word. For Google's AI Overviews — the AI answer above Google's results — we run each of your questions as its own Google search.
Questions
Fair Questions About How SiteCandor Works
What Do You Keep Private, and Why?
We keep three things private. We publish the twelve subjects but not the full list of individual checks, because a competitor could copy that list in an afternoon. We do not publish the weight of each subject, because the checks evolve as search does, and a weight printed on a marketing page is one we would end up defending instead of improving. And we keep our records of which sites have been checked private, because publishing them would show which businesses had their website looked at — including yours.
Does the Free Website Audit Run Everything?
Yes. It reads your whole site, up to 250 pages, and runs our full set of checks — including the ones that only exist across a whole site: the same text repeated on many pages, links that lead nowhere, and pages with almost nothing on them built only to catch searches. Pro runs the same audit again every month.
What Is an Advisory Item?
An advisory item is something worth your attention that no scan of your pages can verify — like whether your Google Business Profile is claimed. Advisory items are never scored and never counted as checked. We name them, say why they matter, and tell you how to check them yourself.