My own tool gave my own website a failing grade
I built a tool that reads your homepage the way ChatGPT and Perplexity do, and scores it on ten signals. Is your address there? Your opening hours? Your reviews? Your structured data? Last week I pointed it at my own homepage. I regretted it immediately: my own website earned a well-deserved 40 out of 100.
No typo, unfortunately. I'm leaving sixty points on the table on what is supposed to be my own calling card, and that took a moment to sink in.
What gets measured, and how I scored
| Signal | Points | Me |
|---|---|---|
| Schema markup (LocalBusiness) | 18 | ✓ |
| Name, address & phone | 16 | ✗ |
| Opening hours | 10 | ✗ |
| Reviews or ratings | 10 | ✗ |
| Geo coordinates or Maps embed | 10 | ✗ |
| FAQ structure | 10 | ✗ |
| Citable content blocks | 10 | ✓ |
| City or region mention | 8 | ✓ |
| Google Business Profile link | 4 | ✗ |
| Content language clarity | 4 | ✓ |
Four out of ten green. So now what?
Not all sixty points are the same kind of failure
That is the one thing worth remembering the next time a score like this lands in front of you.
Twenty points come down to where I am. The site went live recently. No reviews, no client stories, because clients come first.
Twenty-four points are a different matter. Opening hours, geo coordinates, a Maps embed, a link to my Google Business Profile. I have no premises. There is no door that opens at half past nine. Those points are out of reach, and faking them would mean publishing structured data about a building that doesn't exist.
That leaves sixteen points for name, address and phone number. Those I could have had. I have no shop window, but I do have an address and a phone number, and neither appears anywhere on my site. That one I can't defend.
So a 40 doesn't mean my site is broken. It means my site is missing the signals a local business gets judged on. That is a meaningful difference, and no audit tool I know of puts it next to the number.
Remember this. When someone emails to say you're invisible, with a score attached, ask which signals they measured and whether those apply to your kind of business. Without that answer the number tells you nothing.
For a local business it works the other way round
There are points I can't reach. Opening hours, name and address and phone, geo coordinates, reviews, a link to your Google Business Profile. Together 50 points, exactly half the score.
Do you run a restaurant, a practice, an office? Then you already have all of that information. It's just in the wrong place, or in a form no machine can read.
Putting your opening hours on your site takes ten minutes. Publishing your address and phone number as structured data takes half an hour, once, and then it's done. Linking your Google Business Profile is one link. Reviews take longer, but you almost certainly have satisfied clients you've never thought to ask.
I'm stuck at 40 because I have no premises. You're at 40 because nobody told you where that information belongs.
You don't need to reach 100
This is where most people give up, and I understand why. It gets made more complicated than it is.
You're not competing with a perfect website. You're competing with the business three streets over. Nine times out of ten they have no opening hours in structured data either, no FAQ, and have never once checked what ChatGPT says about them.
When someone asks an AI assistant for a good restaurant nearby, or a lawyer for an employment case, it picks from the businesses it can find and understand. That list is shorter than you think. You don't have to be the best in the country. You have to be more legible than the business next door.
Where I'd start
In this order, because that's where the points are.
- Make sure your name, address and phone number are identical everywhere. On your site, in your Google Business Profile, in every directory you appear in. One inconsistent phone number makes you two businesses to a machine.
- Put your opening hours on your site, not only in Google.
- Ask for reviews. And answer them, including the mediocre ones. Especially the mediocre ones.
- Write down the five questions clients ask you on the phone, and put them on your site with the answers. That's your FAQ, and it's the kind of text an AI assistant picks up.
- Have someone look at your structured data. This is the one item where you'll probably need help.
The first four you can do yourself. Today, if you feel like it.
What I'm doing about mine
The FAQ is up. Reviews are next, and that will take longer than I'd like, because I have to go and ask for them first.
Those twenty-four points for opening hours and geo coordinates I will never get. Fine. I now know which points those are and why. A score isn't a plan, but it's where a plan starts.
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