How does your website score?
Paste your URL and get an instant A–F grade — thirteen checks covering pricing visibility, trust signals, SEO basics, structured data, and a real Google PageSpeed run. The whole report is free: every finding, why it matters, and how to fix it.
Thirteen checks, benchmarked against real competitor sites
We analyzed top-ranked local-business websites across 88 categories — plumbers, cleaners, salons, roofers — and built the rubric from what actually separates the winners. Not a generic SEO checklist. Three areas: conversion, search & AI visibility, and performance.
Conversion
Does your site turn visitors into customers?
Pricing visibility
10%We scan your page — including its structured data — for prices, starting-at figures, and estimate language. Hidden pricing sends comparison shoppers to the competitor who shows a number. This affects conversions, not rankings.
Across our proprietary local-business website research, 92% of sites hide pricing entirely — 218 of 237 analyzed sites showed no pricing on their homepage or service pages (N=237). See the research
Trust signals
12%We look for reviews and testimonials, licensing and insurance language, a phone number, and a physical address — in your visible page and in its structured data. The proof local customers check before they call.
Across our proprietary local-business website research, years in business is the most universal trust signal — founding-year claims appear in hero subtext, trust strips, and nav badges in nearly every category we analyzed. See the research
Call to action
12%We check for a tap-to-call link, a contact path, and clear action phrasing — the difference between a visitor and a lead.
Across our proprietary local-business website research, the dominant high-converting pattern pairs a sticky phone number with a "Book Now" or "Get a Free Quote" button. See the research
Stock photography
6%We check your images against known stock-photo sources. Best-effort: when there is no signal either way — or your images only load with JavaScript — we say we couldn’t check rather than guess, and the check is excluded from your grade.
Across our proprietary local-business website research, 60 of 88 categories analyzed showed zero stock photography on any top-ranked competitor site (N=88 categories). See the research
Search & AI visibility
Can Google — and AI search — find and trust it?
SEO basics
10%We check your title tag, meta description, H1 heading, and canonical link — with length thresholds for each. The basics search engines read first; your report shows the actual lengths we found.
Server-rendered content
8%We measure how much of your content is readable without running JavaScript. Many AI assistants and some crawlers only read the raw HTML — a JavaScript-only page is invisible to them.
Structured data
6%We parse your page’s schema.org structured data (JSON-LD) and look for a business listing with a name plus a phone or address — the machine-readable card Google and AI search trust.
Sitemap
5%We look in the two standard locations: a Sitemap line in robots.txt, or /sitemap.xml. A sitemap helps Google discover your pages — it’s not a direct ranking boost, and we say so.
Robots.txt
3%We fetch /robots.txt and make sure it exists and isn’t accidentally blocking your whole site from search engines — a surprisingly common way businesses vanish from Google.
Social preview tags
4%We check the Open Graph and Twitter card tags that control how your site looks when someone shares it in a text, a chat, or a social post — title, description, and image.
Mobile-friendliness
4%We check for a correctly configured mobile viewport — the baseline that makes your site readable on a phone instead of a pinch-and-zoom desktop miniature.
Performance
How fast does it feel?
Server response time
6%We measure how long your server takes to start answering — the first wait every visitor sits through. This one is a server response-time check only, separate from the Google PageSpeed run below.
Google PageSpeed
14%We run Google’s own PageSpeed test on your mobile page and report the real Lighthouse performance score — largest contentful paint, layout shift, and blocking time included. It arrives about 30 seconds after your other results.
All figures come from our own dataset. Browse the full local-business website statistics
What we check, and how the grade is built
Automated checks run against your live site — no AI guesswork. Each check scores 0–100 with a pass / warn / fail badge (or a couldn't-check state that never counts against you), and the overall grade is a weighted average.
Dimension weights
- Google PageSpeed14%
- Trust signals12%
- Call to action12%
- Pricing visibility10%
- SEO basics10%
- Server-rendered content8%
- Stock photography6%
- Structured data6%
- Server response time6%
- Sitemap5%
- Social preview tags4%
- Mobile-friendliness4%
- Robots.txt3%
Google PageSpeed, trust signals, and calls to action weigh heaviest — real speed and the proof that turns a visitor into a lead. If a check can’t run for your site, it is excluded and the remaining weights are rescaled — you’re never penalized for what we couldn’t measure.
Grade bands
- A90–100
Winning. Your site out-executes most local competitors.
- B80–89
Solid, with a few gaps costing you leads.
- C70–79
Average. Fixable issues are sending customers elsewhere.
- D60–69
Below the bar on checks that decide who gets the call.
- FBelow 60
Your site is actively losing you business.
Honesty notes: the Google PageSpeed check is the real thing — we run Google’s own PageSpeed test on your mobile page and report the actual Lighthouse performance score. The separate server response time check measures only how fast your server starts answering, and we never present it as a PageSpeed score. The stock-photography check matches images against known stock sources and will say we couldn’t check when there is no reliable signal.
Built for every local trade
The rubric is trade-aware because the research behind it is. See what a winning site looks like in your industry:
Frequently asked questions
What does a website grade measure?
Thirteen checks across three areas that decide whether a local-business website wins customers. Conversion: pricing visibility, trust signals, calls to action, and stock-photography use. Search & AI visibility: SEO basics, server-rendered content, structured data, sitemap, robots.txt, social preview tags, and mobile-friendliness. Performance: server response time plus a real Google PageSpeed test. Each check scores 0–100 and rolls up into one A–F grade. The rubric comes from our own research into top-ranked local-business competitor sites across 88 categories — not a generic SEO checklist.
Is this free? Do I need to enter my email?
Everything is free with no email — the full report, every finding, why it matters, and how to fix it, right on the page. The only email field is optional: leave your name and email if you want us to design you a free preview site that fixes the list. No credit card, ever.
How is my score calculated?
Each of the thirteen checks is scored 0–100 by automated checks against your live site, then combined into a weighted average. Google PageSpeed weighs heaviest at 14%, then trust signals and calls to action at 12% each — the checks that most directly cost you leads. If a check can’t run for your site, it is excluded and the remaining weights are rescaled, so you’re never penalized for what we couldn’t measure. Grade bands: A is 90 or above, B is 80–89, C is 70–79, D is 60–69, F is below 60. The full weight table is in the "What we check" section on this page.
Is this a Google PageSpeed or Core Web Vitals score?
Partly, yes. The Google PageSpeed check runs Google’s own PageSpeed test on your mobile page and reports the real Lighthouse performance score, including Core Web Vitals like largest contentful paint and layout shift. The separate server response time check measures only how long your server takes to start answering — we label the two clearly and never mix them.
What if my site scores low?
A low grade means your site is losing customers to competitors on things that are fixable — hidden pricing, weak trust signals, no clear way to call. You can fix them on your current site using the how-to-fix steps in your report, or let GrowLocal build you one that gets these right from day one. Previewing a GrowLocal site for your business is free.