Website Audit
Issue reference
Every check the RankX AI Website Audit runs, with its severity, its weight, what it means and which audit paths can produce a verdict for it.
Every check the Website Audit runs, generated from the product's own taxonomy rather than written by hand. The last column is the one worth reading: it names which of the three audit paths can produce a verdict for that check at all.
A check whose path did not run is reported as not assessed, never as passed. Three checks are assessable on no path, and they are listed as such rather than quietly omitted, because a visible gap records something a silent absence loses. What "a check did not run" means is the page that explains why.
How to read the table
Severity is what the check reports when it fires: an issue is a problem, a warning is worth knowing and costs the score less.
Weight is how much the check costs the score when it fires. The penalty is scaled by the right denominator for that class: pages crawled for a per-page finding, the sitemap for a sitemap finding, and the site itself for a site-wide one, which takes its full weight rather than being diluted by page count.
Assessed by names the audit paths that can answer it. Full crawl serves every scheduled audit and every full crawl. Instant page check runs a browser and serves the specific-pages mode only. Sitemap analysis compares your sitemap against what was found.
Content
| Check | Code | Severity | Weight | What it means | Assessed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missing Title Tag | missing_title | Issue | 8 | Pages without a title tag get no search snippet and rank poorly. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Duplicate Title Tags | duplicate_title | Issue | 6 | Multiple pages sharing the same title confuse search engines. | Full crawl |
| Duplicate Meta Descriptions | duplicate_descriptions | Warning | 3 | Multiple pages sharing the same meta description weaken each page’s search snippet and dilute relevance signals. | Full crawl |
| Short Title Tag | short_title | Warning | 4 | Titles under 30 characters miss keyword opportunity and look incomplete. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Title Tag Too Long | long_title | Warning | 4 | Titles over 60 characters get truncated in search results, losing impact. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Missing Meta Description | missing_description | Warning | 5 | Pages without a meta description often get poor search snippets. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Missing H1 Tag | missing_h1 | Issue | 7 | Every page should have exactly one H1 to signal its main topic. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Images Missing Alt Text | missing_alt_text | Warning | 4 | Images without alt text hurt accessibility and image search visibility. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Thin Content | thin_content | Warning | 5 | Pages with fewer than 200 words of readable text are considered thin content. Search engines use word count and content density to assess page quality, and thin pages are often deprioritised in rankings or excluded from the index entirely. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Duplicate Content | duplicate_content | Issue | 7 | Duplicate pages split ranking signals and can cause indexing problems. | Not assessed on any path |
| Missing Social Media Tags | missing_og_tags | Warning | 3 | Without Open Graph tags your pages look poor when shared on social. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Lorem Ipsum Placeholder Text | placeholder_content | Issue | 8 | Placeholder text left in production signals incomplete, low-quality content. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Multiple H1 Headings | multiple_h1 | Warning | 3 | More than one H1 makes the page read as several competing topics; extraction systems and crawlers use the outline to decide what the page is about. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Skipped Heading Levels | skipped_heading_levels | Warning | 3 | A heading outline that jumps levels (H2 straight to H4) corrupts the document structure assistive tech and content-extraction systems rely on. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Short Meta Description | short_description | Warning | 3 | A present but very short meta description wastes the snippet: Google fills the gap with auto-extracted text you did not choose. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Long Meta Description | long_description | Warning | 2 | Descriptions past ~165 characters are truncated mid-sentence in results, cutting off the click-through pitch. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Title and H1 Disagree | title_h1_mismatch | Warning | 1 | The title and the H1 share no significant word. When Google rewrites a title it uses the H1 about half the time, a page whose two names disagree loses control of both. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Low Readability | low_readability | Warning | 3 | Content readability is below recommended levels, making pages harder for visitors to read and understand. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
Technical
| Check | Code | Severity | Weight | What it means | Assessed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broken Internal Links | broken_links | Issue | 8 | Links pointing to 4xx pages waste crawl budget and frustrate users. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Redirect Chains | redirect_chains | Warning | 5 | Multiple redirects in sequence slow page load and dilute link equity. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| HSTS Not Enabled | missing_hsts | Warning | 4 | HSTS forces HTTPS connections, protecting against protocol downgrade attacks. | Not assessed on any path |
| Noindex Pages Found | noindex_pages | Warning | 6 | Pages marked noindex are excluded from search; confirm this is intentional. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Missing Canonical Tag | missing_canonical | Warning | 4 | Without a canonical tag search engines may index the wrong URL version. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| No XML Sitemap | missing_sitemap | Issue | 7 | An XML sitemap helps search engines discover and index your pages faster. | Full crawl |
| HTTP URLs in Sitemap | http_urls | Issue | 5 | Your sitemap should only list HTTPS URLs to avoid mixed-content issues. | Not assessed on any path |
| HTTP Links on HTTPS Page | mixed_content_links | Issue | 6 | HTTP links on an HTTPS page trigger mixed-content warnings and can break security. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Slow Page Load Time | slow_page_load | Warning | 3 | Pages with high load time frustrate users and are penalised in ranking signals. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| No Robots.txt File | missing_robots_txt | Warning | 5 | A missing robots.txt means crawlers have no crawl guidance for your site. | Full crawl |
| No Page Compression | missing_compression | Issue | 7 | Pages are served without Gzip or Brotli compression. Uncompressed HTML and text files are typically 5–10× larger in transit, directly inflating Time to First Byte, Largest Contentful Paint, and total page load time, all Core Web Vitals signals Google uses in ranking. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Oversized Page | oversized_page | Warning | 4 | One or more pages exceed 3MB of HTML. Large pages drain crawl budget, inflate Time to First Byte, and severely penalise mobile users on limited connections. Google recommends keeping page weight under 500KB. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Missing Favicon | missing_favicon | Warning | 2 | A missing favicon makes browser tabs look unprofessional and harder to identify. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Broken Resources | broken_resources | Issue | 6 | Scripts, stylesheets, or images that fail to load (4xx/5xx) break page rendering and functionality for real visitors. | Full crawl |
| Unminified Assets | unminified_assets | Warning | 3 | JavaScript or CSS files served without minification are larger than necessary, adding transfer bytes and slowing page loads. | Full crawl |
| Oversized Images | oversized_images | Warning | 3 | Images larger than 100KB inflate page weight and slow loading, especially on mobile connections. Compress or resize them. | Full crawl |
| Canonical Points to Broken Page | canonical_to_broken | Issue | 5 | A page’s canonical tag points to a URL that returns an error (4xx/5xx), so search engines cannot index the intended version. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Canonical Chain | canonical_chain | Warning | 4 | Canonical tags form a chain (A→B→C) instead of pointing directly to the final URL, diluting canonicalization signals. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Recursive Canonical | recursive_canonical | Warning | 4 | A page’s canonical tag participates in a loop that never resolves to a single preferred URL, confusing search engines. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| Deprecated HTML Tags | deprecated_html_tags | Warning | 2 | Pages use HTML tags no longer supported in modern standards (e.g. <center>, <font>), which can cause rendering and accessibility problems. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| SSL Certificate Expiring Soon | ssl_expiring_soon | Issue | 7 | Your SSL certificate expires within 30 days. An expired certificate makes your site inaccessible and triggers browser security warnings for every visitor. | Full crawl |
| Orphan pages in sitemap | sitemap_orphan_pages | Issue | 6 | Pages listed in your sitemap have no internal links pointing to them. Search engines that navigate by following links may never discover these pages. | Sitemap analysis |
| Broken URLs in sitemap | sitemap_broken_urls | Issue | 7 | Your sitemap contains URLs that return error responses (4xx or 5xx). This wastes crawl budget and signals poor site maintenance to search engines. | Sitemap analysis |
| Redirecting URLs in sitemap | sitemap_redirect_urls | Warning | 4 | Some URLs in your sitemap redirect to other pages instead of serving content directly. This dilutes crawl signals and may confuse search engines about your canonical URLs. | Sitemap analysis |
| Indexable pages missing from sitemap | sitemap_crawl_gap | Warning | 4 | Pages discovered during your audit are indexable and returning HTTP 200 but are not listed in your sitemap. Google may deprioritise or miss these pages. | Sitemap analysis |
User experience
| Check | Code | Severity | Weight | What it means | Assessed by |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Slow Server Response Time | slow_ttfb | Issue | 7 | High time-to-first-byte slows every page metric and signals server performance issues. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| No Custom 404 Page | missing_404 | Warning | 3 | A custom 404 page keeps users on your site when they hit broken links. | Full crawl |
| High Cumulative Layout Shift | layout_shift | Warning | 5 | Pages that visually jump around during load frustrate users and hurt rankings. | Instant page check |
| Render-Blocking Resources | render_blocking | Warning | 4 | Scripts or stylesheets are loading synchronously in the document <head>, preventing the browser from displaying any content until they finish downloading and executing. Every render-blocking resource adds direct milliseconds to Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), a Core Web Vitals signal used in Google's ranking algorithm. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
| No Structured Data | missing_structured | Warning | 3 | Structured data (Schema.org) enables rich results in search, improving CTR. | Full crawl, Instant page check |
All three tables above are is generated from RankX AI itself rather than written by hand, as at 19 August 2026 (source 377ef780). When the product changes, this page changes with it.
Where to go next
- What "a check did not run" means, for the three paths and the coverage rule.
- Running an audit, to produce a report.
- The AI Readiness check reference, which is the machine-legibility scorecard rather than the technical crawl.
What "a check did not run" means
Three audit paths, and not every check can be produced by every one. Why RankX AI reports "not assessed" rather than a green tick, and what to do about it.
Keyword research
Discovering keywords in RankX AI, what each figure means, how the cache makes repeats free, and how discovery feeds rank tracking and topic clusters.