What the audit measures
The audit runs 161 checks across 16 categories: structure and content, on-page SEO, targeting and keywords, SEO and AI visibility, GEO optimization, performance (including Core Web Vitals measured via the Google PageSpeed API), accessibility and best practices, TLS and certificate, security headers, email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC, MTA-STS), legal compliance, privacy and trackers, exposure of sensitive files, domain name and DNS, automation layer exposure, and a sixteenth category matched to your site's profile: business listing, online store, media, personal presence, digital service, or presence and trust.
Almost all of these checks are direct measurements, not estimates: we query your server, your DNS records, your TLS certificate, your indexing files (robots.txt, sitemap, llms.txt), the HTML of your homepage and up to 30 key pages of your site, found through your sitemap or menu. A check like “HSTS present” or “GPTBot allowed” has a binary answer anyone can verify.
Only one layer uses AI: writing the verdict and prioritizing the action plan. The measured facts never go through a language model. Result: the same site yields the same findings, and every point of the score ties back to a precise fact shown in the report.
How the score is computed
Each check ends in one of four statuses: compliant, to improve, critical, or information. The "information" status covers findings that are neither a success nor a defect (your domain age, your DNS host, the technologies detected): they are shown but count towards no score, because grading a neutral observation would manufacture a false number. Same logic when your site runs on a closed platform such as Wix or Squarespace: a security header the platform will not let you set is reported as a warning rather than an error, because the finding stays true but the decision is not yours. Each category is graded out of 100 from its checks, and the overall score aggregates the 16 categories with weighting: structure and content count double, on-page SEO and AI optimization one and a half times, because that is where real visibility is decided. Hygiene categories (legal compliance, email, privacy) weigh less: essential, but they do not bring in customers. In the full audit, the measured value is shown next to each check: you can trace every point, or have your webmaster verify them.
The report's “4-week target” uses a heuristic calibrated on the audits we deliver as an agency: around 55% of the gap to a perfect score closes by applying the action plan, the rest requires deeper work (content, authority). The target always sits above the current score (proposing that you aim at your own score is not an objective) and it is capped only at 100. The horizon is four weeks: most listed fixes take one session, and the report URL lets an AI walk you through them.
What the score measures, precisely
The score out of 100 is a technical compliance score: the share of the 161 checks your website passes, weighted by category. It is not a grade handed out by Google, which does not work with a score, and it is not a traffic prediction. It measures the gap between your website's state and the state of the art, on points we all know how to verify the same way, on your site as on your competitor's.
Its value comes not from the number but from its breakdown: every point deducted maps to a named check, with the measured value and the fix. A score you cannot break down only serves to impress; this one reads line by line.
Editorial targeting, measured without search volume
The Targeting and keywords category answers a question few free tools ask: what is this page trying to rank for. We measure no search volume and claim none, that would require a paid index. What we measure is the internal consistency of the targeting: do the title, the H1 and the copy talk about the same subject, are two pages fighting over the same query, do URLs and link labels carry meaning. These are precisely the points a site owner can fix alone, without buying a tool.
A sixteenth category that adapts to your site
Fifteen categories are common to every report. The sixteenth is picked from six profiles based on what your website is: local business, online store, media, personal presence, digital service, or general company website. Auditing the opening hours of a software vendor, or the cart of a portfolio, would manufacture pointless red flags, and a report that blames you for not being what you are not is worth nothing.
The detection deliberately does not rely on what each profile audits. If we required LocalBusiness markup to decide a website is local, the worst website, the one that has precisely nothing, would escape the only category that could help it. It relies on signals that survive poor SEO: pages actually linked, publication dates, an address, a phone number, technical traces of a commerce platform. Each profile counts eight checks: the total stays 160 for everyone, and two websites are only compared profile to profile.
What the audit does not do
No tool does everything. These limits are choices, not oversights:
- No full-site crawl. The analysis covers your homepage, up to 30 key pages and the domain signals (DNS, security, indexing files), where most structural points are decided. A 200-page site is not crawled in full: that is the job of an in-depth audit led by our team.
- No Google ranking data, no backlinks. We measure what your site exposes, not your history in third-party indexes. Rank and link audits are a different craft with different tools.
- No ranking promise. Nobody can guarantee a position in Google or a citation in ChatGPT. We guarantee that the measurable technical and GEO prerequisites will be identified, explained and fixable.
- No opaque score. If you cannot trace where a point comes from, that is a flaw in our report: tell us.
How our crawler identifies itself
Our crawler announces itself as SEOPlusBot/1.0, with a link to this page in its signature. We never impersonate a browser: if your firewall denies us access, the analysis stops and we tell you so clearly, with the steps to allow us, rather than disguising ourselves to get in.
If your website blocks us, allow SEOPlusBot in your firewall or CDN for the duration of the analysis, then run it again. Protecting yourself from bots is good practice: it is not a flaw and it does not penalise your website in any way. We would rather grade nothing at all than grade halfway: no partial audit is produced.
Allowing SEOPlusBot, in one minute
Our crawler always comes from the same address: you can allow it precisely, without opening your firewall to every bot.
- User-agent: SEOPlusBot/1.0 (the full signature carries a link to this page)
- IP address: 148.230.115.190
- Cloudflare: Security, WAF, Tools tab, IP Access Rule "Allow" on 148.230.115.190. Or a custom rule "Skip" when the user-agent contains SEOPlusBot.
- Wordfence (WordPress): Firewall, All Options, "Allowlisted IP addresses", add 148.230.115.190.
- Sucuri: Firewall, Access Control, "Whitelist IP Addresses", add 148.230.115.190.
Then run the analysis again: it is immediate. You can remove the allowance right after.
What we refuse to measure, and why
Other tools display these. We decided not to, and it seems more honest to say why than to let you think we forgot.
- No port scanning, no traceroute. Probing a server's open ports is network reconnaissance. A visibility audit does not need it, and nobody should run that kind of probe against a machine without its owner's written consent. We only ask for what a visitor or a search engine would obtain on its own.
- No score borrowed from a third-party service. Displaying an outside observatory’s grade means showing a number we cannot explain, that can sit pending for hours, and that changes without your website moving. Every point of our score traces back to a measurement we made ourselves, at the moment of the audit.
- No judgement on your host’s nationality. We measure where your server answers from and whether resources leave the European Union, because those are facts with concrete consequences, from latency to GDPR. We do not turn them into a moral grade: choosing a host is a business decision, not a technical fault.
- No leaderboard imposed on you. Your score only appears on our public page if you tick the box. An audit that exposes poor performers without asking turns a measurement into a punishment.
Your data
- A free sign-in (Google or email) is all it takes to run the analysis; no credit card. Your reports are archived in your history.
- Every analysis runs live against your site: no result is cached and served again. Two audits run at two different times measure the real state of the site at each of those times.
- The site uses no ad tracker or third-party cookie. The in-house audience measurement, subject to your consent, is detailed in our privacy policy.
- Usage is limited to 20 analyses per day per IP address, to keep the free service open to everyone.
The decision stays with you
The report says what to fix, in what order, and generates the ready-to-deploy files. Then, three options: you apply it yourself, your webmaster handles it, or OptimizIA.xyz takes over the fixes with a re-audit to measure progress. No recommendation is applied to your site without your decision.