Understanding your report

What the scores mean, how issues are prioritised, and how to get the most out of your results.

Your three scores

Every scan produces three scores shown at the top of your report. Each score is on a 0–100 scale. Higher is better. Hover the ? icon next to each score for a quick explanation.

Overall score

Your headline number — a weighted average across all three dimensions of site quality:

40% — Performance (Audit score)
35% — SEO (part of Audit score)
25% — Content score (when a content scan has been run)

If no content scan has been run, the Overall score is calculated from performance and SEO only. The weighting adjusts automatically.

The Overall score updates every time you run a new scan. Use it as your north star metric — the single number that tells you whether your site is getting better or worse over time.

Audit score

Measures your site's technical health across two areas:

Performance — how fast your pages load, measured using Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI). PSI runs your pages through a real Chrome browser on a simulated mid-tier mobile device and 4G connection — the conditions most of your users are actually on.
SEO fundamentals — whether your pages have the technical elements Google needs to understand and rank them: meta titles, meta descriptions, canonical tags, heading structure, internal links, structured data (JSON-LD), and more.

A score of 90+ is “Good” by Google's standards. 50–89 has room for improvement. Below 50 indicates significant issues likely affecting your rankings and user experience.

Content score

Measures the quality of your written content — not just whether it exists, but whether it's good enough to rank. Google's algorithm heavily weights content quality, especially since the Helpful Content updates.

The content score checks:

Depth — is there enough substance for Google to consider this page authoritative on its topic? Thin pages (very little text, low word count) rarely rank.
Structure — are headings used logically? Does the page have a clear H1, and do subheadings (H2, H3) organise the content in a way that's easy to scan?
Relevance — does the content clearly match what the page is targeting? Unfocused content confuses search engines about what the page is about.
Readability — is the content written at an appropriate level for your audience?

The content score requires a content scan to be run. From your report, go to the Content tab and click Run content analysis. Content scans take 5–15 minutes depending on page count.

Core Web Vitals explained

Core Web Vitals are Google's official metrics for measuring real-world user experience. They became a ranking factor in 2021 and directly affect where your pages appear in search results.

LCP — Largest Contentful Paint

How long it takes for the main content of your page to appear. Usually your hero image or headline. This is the metric users feel most directly — it's the difference between a page that “loads fast” and one that “feels slow.”

Good: under 2.5 seconds
Needs improvement: 2.5–4 seconds
Poor: over 4 seconds

The most common LCP causes: lazy-loaded hero images, render-blocking fonts, large unoptimised images, and render-blocking JavaScript.

CLS — Cumulative Layout Shift

How much your page content moves around as it loads. You've experienced this when you go to click a button and it jumps just before you tap it. CLS measures the total amount of unexpected movement.

Good: 0.1 or less
Needs improvement: 0.1–0.25
Poor: over 0.25

Common causes: images without explicit width/height attributes, ads or embeds without reserved space, web fonts causing text reflow.

INP — Interaction to Next Paint

How quickly your page responds when a user clicks, taps, or types. Replaced FID (First Input Delay) as a Core Web Vital in 2024. A slow INP makes your site feel laggy or unresponsive.

Good: under 200ms
Needs improvement: 200–500ms
Poor: over 500ms

Common causes: heavy JavaScript executing on the main thread, large event handlers, third-party scripts blocking interaction.

TBT — Total Blocking Time

TBT isn't an official Core Web Vital but it's a strong proxy for INP and is included in PSI scoring. It measures how long the main thread is blocked by JavaScript — preventing the browser from responding to user input.

Good: under 200ms
Needs improvement: 200–600ms
Poor: over 600ms

Issue severity levels

Issues are sorted into three levels so you know what to fix first. The level is determined by PSI's own scoring combined with Evalta's impact thresholds.

Critical — directly hurting your performance or rankings right now. These have measurable impact: a failing Core Web Vital, a missing meta description across key pages, or render-blocking resources adding seconds to load time. Fix these first.
Warning — real issues worth addressing once Critical items are resolved. These may not be visibly affecting performance today but will compound over time or as traffic grows.
Minor — smaller improvements that add up. Good to address during regular maintenance but not urgent.

Don't be overwhelmed by a long issue list. Focus on Critical items first — a single Critical fix often moves the needle more than clearing ten Minor issues.

Performance tab

Issues are grouped by page. Click any page row to expand it and see all issues for that page.

Per-page LCP badge

Each page shows its LCP time — colour coded green (Good), amber (Needs improvement), or red (Poor). This is the fastest way to spot which pages need the most attention.

Issue detail

Each issue shows:

Title — what the issue is in plain English
Impact — how much time or bytes could be saved (e.g. “saves 1.2s” or “saves 340KB”)
Affected resources — the specific files, images, or scripts causing the issue
AI chat button — opens the agent for that specific issue (Pro/Agency)

PSI mobile vs desktop

Evalta runs PSI on mobile by default. Mobile scores are typically lower than desktop because PSI simulates a mid-tier device on a 4G connection. This reflects real-world conditions — over 60% of web traffic is mobile.

PSI scores can vary slightly between runs due to network conditions and server response times. Compare trends over multiple scans rather than treating individual readings as definitive.

Content tab

Shows content analysis results per page. If no content scan has been run, you'll see a prompt to start one.

After a content scan, each page shows:

A content quality score (0–100)
Specific issues — thin content, heading structure problems, readability flags
Word count and content depth indicators
AI chat for content-specific fix guidance (Pro/Agency)

You can run content analysis on individual pages or all pages at once. Running it on your highest-traffic pages first gives you the most actionable results quickly.

Score history

The expandable chart below your score cards shows your Overall, Audit, and Content scores across every scan. This is your most important long-term view.

Use it to:

Confirm fixes are working — if you fixed an issue and re-scanned, the chart shows whether your score actually moved
Spot regressions — a score drop between scans usually means something changed on your site (new plugin, theme update, new script added)
Track progress over time — a rising overall score is the clearest evidence your optimisation work is paying off
Show clients — for agencies, the score history chart is compelling evidence of the work you've done

Run a scan before making significant changes to your site — theme updates, new plugins, major content changes. This gives you a clean baseline to compare against and makes it easy to identify if a change caused a regression.

Dismissing issues

Some issues may not be relevant to your site — for example, a “missing meta description” flag on a page you intentionally want search engines to ignore. You can dismiss individual issues from the issue detail view.

Dismissed issues don't affect your score and won't reappear on future scans unless you un-dismiss them from your project settings.