Research

The SEO mistakes even the world's biggest websites make

We run the same audit on the most popular websites in the world that anyone can run on their own site. This page counts how often each check falls short, and updates as sites are re-audited.

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How was this measured?

Each site's home page and up to eleven more pages are read as a search engine first receives them, and every page is run through the same checks. A site “falls short” on a check when the result is anything other than a pass. Sites that refuse automated visits or have no web page are left out, which means the figures describe the sites that could be read, not every popular site.

A check failing is not always a mistake. A very large site may deliberately skip a meta description or block a crawler. The figures show how common each pattern is, not a verdict on any one site.