Owner-maintained process · 8 October 2026
Audit one public page without a score
This is a review checklist, not a ranking test, a certificate or an instruction to install a third-party skill. Record what can be checked, what matters for this page, and what remains unknown.
Set the boundary before a fetch
- One URLRecord one authorized public URL, page purpose, target audience and query if known.
- PermissionConfirm who may fetch the page and which owner policies apply. Do not submit protected or staging URLs without authorization.
- EvidenceDate each observation; save a URL, screenshot, rendered view or owner-tool reference. Mark unknown where evidence is missing.
- ReviewName the SEO/site owner. No content, code or deployment change follows without separate approval.
Unscored review areas
| Area | Record | Do not infer |
|---|---|---|
| Access and discovery | HTTP response, canonical/robots controls if available, relevant sitemap and links; note Googlebot versus other crawler policy separately. | Indexing, visibility or AI citation from file presence or crawler permission. |
| Page description | Actual title, meta description, main heading, page purpose and visible text. | Failure from fixed character bands, one-H1 rule or heading order alone. |
| Content and claims | Whether the page answers the audience's task, identifies claims, cites needed evidence and uses helpful formats. | A universal FAQ, comparison table, author page, five keywords or 35% extractability uplift. |
| Markup and rendering | Relevant structured data against visible content; rendered view, viewport behavior and any owner-supplied performance data. | That JSON-LD or FAQPage is mandatory, or that one raw HTML fetch proves crawler rendering and mobile performance. |
| Change proposal | Specific problem, evidence, relevance, proposed edit, reviewer, risk and separate approver. | Composite score, predicted ranking/AI citation, fixed impact order or deployment clearance. |
Use the current Google Search AI guide, SEO starter guide and relevant feature documentation only for Google-specific claims. Other platforms and the page's own purpose need separate evidence. A small linked site may not need a sitemap; llms.txt is not a Google Search visibility point.
Record a finding in plain terms
Date and URL: … Purpose and audience: … Observation and evidence: … Relevance to this page: … Unknowns or N/A: … Proposed change, if any: … SEO/site reviewer: … Separate content/technical approver: …
Prioritize only after the named reviewer weighs the actual page problem, user impact, evidence and owner effort. Keep a change log. A real ranking or citation outcome would need separate measurement and cannot be promised by this checklist.
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