How does scoring work?

Checks are grouped together into Categories, e.g. “Accessibility”, “Content”, “Marketing” etc.

Categories are arranged in a hierarchy, so inside of Content is “Writing”, “Links” and more. Accessibility contains “WCAG A”, “WCAG AA”, and so on. Both Checks and Categories have scores.

Each Category starts by scoring a perfect 100, then for every Check with open issues, Silktide subtracts from the score based upon its ‘maximum impact’, i.e. the maximum percentage it is allowed to reduce a Category score by. A single check might impact scores for multiple categories, for example the spelling check has a major impact on Writing, and a small impact on SEO content.

Individual Checks also have scores based upon the types of issues within a page, and the type of Check. All Checks have been calibrated against real-world use (e.g. broken links are less common and more severe than potential spelling errors).

A Category score cannot go below zero. A ‘very bad’ check such as Flash simply has a high potential impact on a given Category. For example for Accessibility, the impact of Flash might be as high as 100%, meaning the use of Flash could reduce the Accessibility score for a page to zero.

Users can also apply custom scoring by using custom Checks/Policies if they wish. Several of Silktide’s built-in Policies apply impact scores by default (e.g. offensive language, missing cookie policies).

Overall scoring bands

0 – 29 = Very poor
30 – 49 = Poor
50 – 59 = Fair
60 – 79 = Good
80 – 89 = Great
90 – 100 = Excellent