What is a good SEO score? How audit scores work

Run the same page through three SEO tools and you can get three different scores, sometimes twenty points apart. None of them is wrong. An SEO score is not a Google metric; it is a summary a tool calculates from its own checks, using its own weights, on whatever it chose to measure. Understanding that changes what counts as a good score.

What is a good SEO score?

On the Seouch scale, 90 to 100 is healthy and 70 to 89 means a handful of fixes remain. A more useful definition: no errors on indexability, crawl access or HTTPS, and Core Web Vitals passing for real users. Scores from different tools are not comparable, so compare a page only with its own previous results.

Why scores differ between tools

Every website SEO score answers a slightly different question.

Score type	What it measures	Scale	Comparable with
Lighthouse SEO	A short list of pass or fail checks on one page	0–100	Other Lighthouse runs
Lighthouse Performance	Weighted lab metrics on a simulated device	0–100	Runs under the same conditions
Crawler “site health” scores	Usually the share of crawled pages without errors	Percentage	The same tool on the same site
Authority metrics	A link-based estimate of a domain’s strength	0–100	Nothing; it is not a health score
Seouch score	Weighted checks across six categories on one page	0–100	Seouch scores over time

Three differences drive most of the gap:

1. Which checks count. One tool checks a dozen things, another checks a hundred. A page can pass all of a short list and fail much of a long one.
2. How checks are weighted. Google says each Lighthouse SEO audit carries equal weight in the SEO score, apart from a manual structured data check (Lighthouse SEO audits). Most other tools weight checks by how much they think each one matters.
3. Lab or field data. Lab tests vary from run to run; field data from real users moves slowly. A tool that blends them will move differently from one that uses only one.

Authority metrics such as domain authority are a separate kind of number entirely. Use the domain authority checker for that, and do not mix it with audit scores.

How the Seouch score is calculated

The full method is on the methodology page. In short, every audit runs the same checks and each check returns pass, notice, warning or error. A check is worth a fixed number of points; a pass earns all of them, a notice 70%, a warning 30% and an error none. Checks that cannot run, for example when a site blocks our request, are left out of the total rather than counted as failures.

Each category score is points earned divided by points available. The overall score is a weighted average of the categories:

Category	Weight	What it covers
Technical and crawlability	20%	Status codes, redirects, HTTPS, robots.txt, indexability, canonical, sitemap, viewport
On-page	20%	Titles, descriptions, headings, image alt text, links, social tags
Content and structure	10%	Text in the HTML, depth, readability, answers under question headings, dates, authorship
Performance	20%	Core Web Vitals from real users where available, Lighthouse lab data otherwise
Security	10%	Certificate, HSTS, security headers, mixed content
AI visibility	20%	AI crawler access, fetch-as-crawler test, snippet eligibility, entity markup, citability

Two sub-scores sit alongside the overall number. Search Health averages the technical, on-page, content, performance and security categories. AI Readiness averages the AI visibility and content categories.

What the bands mean

Score	Band	What it usually means
90–100	Healthy	Nothing urgent. Watch performance and keep content current.
70–89	Minor aches	A handful of fixes, usually on-page details or structured data.
50–69	Sore	Real problems that limit crawling, speed or AI eligibility.
0–49	Ouch	Fundamental issues. Start with the errors in the fix list.

Google says a Lighthouse performance score is coloured red from 0 to 49, orange from 50 to 89 and green from 90 to 100 (Lighthouse performance scoring). Our bands use the same 50 and 90 thresholds, with one extra split at 70.

A worked example: why the number can mislead

Take a page that passes every check except one: it carries a noindex directive. The Indexability check is worth 8 of the 65 points normally available in the technical category, so the technical score falls to 88. Technical is 20% of the overall score, and every other category is at 100, so the overall score stays at 98.

That page cannot appear in Google at all. A 98 that hides a noindex is the clearest reason to read the fix list rather than the dial. Our report sorts issues by severity first and points second, so an error like this one sits at the top regardless of how few points it costs.

The reverse also happens. A page can lose fifteen points to missing social tags, a long title and a few images without alt text, and still perform well in search, because none of those stops it from being crawled, indexed or ranked.

Why 100 is not the goal

Google says a Lighthouse performance score of 100 is “extremely challenging to achieve and not expected”, and recommends aiming for the 90 to 100 range instead. Our view: the same logic applies to audit scores.

• Some checks are choices, not faults. Blocking AI training crawlers is a policy decision, so we score it at zero points either way. An llms.txt file is worth a single informational point because Google does not use it.
• The last points cost the most. Going from 92 to 100 often means rewriting dozens of titles or rebuilding a theme for a few milliseconds.
• Scores ignore what ranks pages. No audit score measures whether your content is the best answer, how much demand exists, or how many sites link to you.
• Google does not use anyone’s score. Google says it does not endorse third-party SEO tools (Do you need an SEO?).

How to prioritise instead

Work through findings in this order, whatever the score says:

1. Errors that block search entirely: noindex on pages that should rank, robots.txt blocking Googlebot, non-200 status codes, no HTTPS.
2. Problems on templates: a missing canonical or a slow Largest Contentful Paint on the product template affects every product.
3. Core Web Vitals failing for real users, starting with mobile. The Core Web Vitals checker shows field and lab data side by side.
4. AI crawler access, if you want to appear in ChatGPT, Claude or Perplexity answers.
5. Low-effort notices, batched into one session.

Use the effort, impact and owner tags in the report to hand each item to the right person.

What to do next

1. Run the free audit on your home page and one page from each template, and note each score.
2. Fix every error, then re-scan. Compare the new score with your own previous score, not with another site’s.
3. If the score sits in the 90s with no errors, move your time to content and links; the SEO audit guide shows where those fit.
4. If you want the same checks across many pages, crawl them with the website audit tool.

Frequently asked questions

Does Google use SEO scores to rank websites?

No. SEO scores are calculated by tools, not by Google, and Google does not endorse any third-party SEO tool. A score summarises how many of one tool's checks a page passes; Google ranks pages on relevance, quality and many other signals no audit can see.

Why did my SEO score change when I did not change anything?

Performance data varies between runs because network conditions, ads, tests and third-party scripts vary. Real-user Core Web Vitals also move as new visits replace old ones in the 28-day window. Small swings of a few points are normal.

Is domain authority the same as an SEO score?

No. Domain authority and similar metrics estimate the strength of a site's backlink profile, using each vendor's own link index. They say nothing about whether a page can be crawled, indexed or loaded quickly, which is what an audit score measures.

What SEO score should a new website aim for?

Aim for no errors and passing Core Web Vitals, which usually puts a page in the 90s on our scale. Beyond that, a new site gains far more from content and links than from turning the last notices into passes.