Website Inspection Methodology
This document is a complete account of what happens when Hickey Avenue inspects a website — every check performed, how each finding is verified, and why it matters to the business being inspected. Nothing in an inspection report is asserted without a named, checkable source. This page names them.
The same engine described here runs two ways: a free, instant check available at any time on this site (nine checks, marked below), and a full inspection Cameron runs by hand and sends directly (all checks described here).
How Findings Are Verified
Every check below is labeled with one of three confidence classes. The label tells you exactly how much to trust a given finding and where the underlying data came from.
Read directly from the site's own HTML or HTTP response. This is not an opinion — the underlying evidence is the site's own code, and anyone can view-source the same page and see it.
Pulled from a named external system — Google PageSpeed Insights or Google Business Profile. The number comes from Google, not from Hickey Avenue, and can be independently reproduced by looking the business up on the same public tools.
A pattern match rather than a direct read — for example, detecting a contact form by its markup rather than confirming a human filled it out. Stated honestly as lower-confidence. By design, an inferred signal is never allowed to fail a site on its own — it is only ever one input alongside observed or authority signals.
Step 0 — Reachability Gate
Before any check below runs, the inspection confirms the site actually responds — and that the response is the real homepage, not a bot-protection challenge page or an error page mistaken for content. If the site is unreachable, or the response looks like a block rather than the site itself, every downstream check that would depend on that response is withheld rather than guessed at, and no score is presented as if it were a clean pass. An inspection that can't see the real site says so, instead of quietly reporting on the wrong page.
Step 1 — Connection & Security
Everything in this step is read directly from the site's connection and its SSL certificate — all observed, all reproducible by visiting the site yourself.
- What We Check
- Whether the homepage loads at all when requested.
- Why It Matters
- Every visitor currently sees a failure, not the business. Nothing else can be checked until this passes.
- Typical Fix
- Emergency — contact the host today.
- What We Check
- Whether the homepage returns an error code (404, 500, and similar) instead of the page itself.
- Why It Matters
- Search engines and visitors alike treat an error response as the page not existing.
- Typical Fix
- A developer fix, same day.
- What We Check
- Whether the site forces a secure connection, and whether its SSL certificate is currently valid.
- Why It Matters
- Browsers show a "Not Secure" warning on a failure here; some visitors bounce immediately, and it is a negative Google ranking signal.
- Typical Fix
- A hosting or SSL renewal task, usually same-day.
- What We Check
- Days remaining until the SSL certificate expires. Flagged when fewer than 14 days remain.
- Why It Matters
- When a certificate lapses, browsers block the site outright with a hard security warning — not a ranking penalty, an instant total outage.
- Typical Fix
- A renewal task, usually automatic if the host is configured correctly — worth verifying auto-renewal is actually on.
- What We Check
- The same expiry date, flagged as an earlier warning when between 14 and 30 days remain.
- Why It Matters
- Fine today, but nothing about this check alone confirms anything is actively watching the renewal. A manual or misconfigured renewal becomes the same failure as an invalid certificate, with no warning beforehand.
- Typical Fix
- Confirm auto-renewal is on, or calendar the manual renewal — a five-minute check.
Step 2 — On-Page Signals
Read from the page's own HTML. Most of these are observed directly; two (contact-path detection and analytics detection) are inferred from pattern matching and are labeled accordingly.
- What We Check
- Whether the page declares a mobile viewport tag.
- Why It Matters
- Without it, phones render the page as a shrunk desktop layout instead of a responsive one. The majority of local searches happen on a phone — this is one of the most common reasons a mobile visitor leaves within seconds.
- Typical Fix
- A one-line HTML fix.
- What We Check
- Whether a page title exists and falls within the length Google reliably displays in search results.
- Why It Matters
- The title is the first thing a searcher sees. A truncated or missing title costs click-through even when the underlying ranking is fine.
- Typical Fix
- A one-line copy edit.
- What We Check
- Whether a meta description exists and falls within the length Google reliably displays.
- Why It Matters
- When it's missing, Google writes its own snippet — usually a weaker sales pitch than the business would write for itself.
- Typical Fix
- A one-line copy edit.
- What We Check
- Whether the page has exactly one H1 heading — zero or more than one both fail this check.
- Why It Matters
- A minor but real SEO signal — the wrong H1 count dilutes what both readers and search engines understand as the page's main topic.
- Typical Fix
- A template fix.
- What We Check
- Whether a click-to-call phone link exists, or a form/link that specifically looks like a contact path — a generic newsletter signup does not count.
- Why It Matters
- A visitor ready to buy has no way to reach the business — the most direct kind of lost lead.
- Typical Fix
- A copy or template change, same day.
- What We Check
- Whether structured data (schema) exists on the page and at least one recognized type could actually be extracted from it — present-but-empty schema is treated as a failure here, not a silent pass.
- Why It Matters
- Schema is what earns rich results — star ratings, business info — directly in search. Missing it is a visibility ceiling other results don't have.
- Typical Fix
- Usually an SEO plugin configuration, not custom code.
- What We Check
- The share of images on the page missing alt text — flagged when more than a quarter are missing it.
- Why It Matters
- An accessibility failure for screen-reader users, and a missed on-page SEO signal on every one of those images.
- Typical Fix
- A content task — write the missing alt text.
- What We Check
- Whether both files return a successful response at their standard paths.
- Why It Matters
- Makes it harder for search engines to fully discover and prioritize crawling the site's pages.
- Typical Fix
- An SEO plugin setting or a two-file upload.
- What We Check
- Whether a recognizable analytics pattern (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or Meta Pixel) appears in the page source.
- Why It Matters
- Without analytics, the business can't see what's working — every marketing dollar spent afterward is unmeasured.
- Typical Fix
- A tag install, same day.
- What We Check
- Whether any Open Graph meta tags exist. This is an opportunity signal, not a scored defect.
- Why It Matters
- Without them, a share to Facebook, LinkedIn, or a text-message preview shows a blank or broken card instead of the business's own image and description — including shares the business doesn't control, like a customer tagging them.
- Typical Fix
- A handful of meta tags, same day.
- What We Check
- Whether existing structured data includes a LocalBusiness or Service type. This is an opportunity signal, not a scored defect.
- Why It Matters
- Without it, Google can't confidently pull map-pack rich results — hours, phone, category — from the schema that's already there.
- Typical Fix
- Usually a plugin setting or a few lines of JSON-LD — cheap once schema already exists.
Step 3 — Performance (Google PageSpeed Insights)
Every number in this step is authority class — pulled directly from Google's own PageSpeed Insights API, not measured or estimated by Hickey Avenue. The same numbers can be reproduced independently at pagespeed.web.dev.
- What We Check
- Google's own mobile performance score. Flagged as a serious defect when it falls below 30 out of 100.
- Why It Matters
- Google's own published research ties this range to majority visitor abandonment before the page even becomes usable.
- Typical Fix
- Usually a hosting, image-weight, or plugin problem — a developer task.
- What We Check
- Time for the page's main content to appear on mobile — Google's own Core Web Vital.
- Why It Matters
- Overlaps with the performance score above (the same underlying slowness), weighted lighter here so one root cause is never penalized twice.
- Typical Fix
- Image compression or a hosting change — a developer task.
- What We Check
- The same performance score, flagged as a lighter warning in the 30–70 "needs work" range.
- Why It Matters
- Not a crisis, but every extra second of load time measurably reduces conversion rate — Google's own published research.
- Typical Fix
- Image compression, caching, or a plugin audit — a developer task.
- What We Check
- Google's own accessibility score. This is an opportunity signal, not a scored defect.
- Why It Matters
- Flags real barriers for visitors using a screen reader or keyboard-only navigation. Beyond fairness, ADA web-accessibility complaints are a real and growing legal exposure for small businesses.
- Typical Fix
- Varies — usually several small fixes, a developer task.
Step 4 — Local Reputation (Google Business Profile)
Every check in this step is authority class — pulled from the business's own public Google Business Profile listing, reproducible by looking the business up on Google Maps or Search.
- What We Check
- Whether a Google Places search returns at least one matching result for the business name and city.
- Why It Matters
- No listing means no map-pack presence at all — invisible for "near me" searches, where most local intent lives.
- Typical Fix
- Claim or create the listing — same-day, though verification can take longer.
- What We Check
- Total review count on the listing.
- Why It Matters
- Review count and recency are a direct local-ranking factor and a trust signal a buyer checks before calling.
- Typical Fix
- A review-generation habit, not a one-time fix.
- What We Check
- Whether business hours are populated on the listing, and whether the listed website matches the actual domain.
- Why It Matters
- A visitor checking "open now" on Google either gets no answer or gets sent to the wrong site.
- Typical Fix
- A five-minute Google Business Profile dashboard edit.
- What We Check
- Photo count on the listing, flagged below 5. This is an opportunity signal, not a scored defect.
- Why It Matters
- Listings with more photos measurably get more clicks and calls — a cheap, fast lever most competitors haven't bothered with either.
- Typical Fix
- Upload 10–15 real photos — a same-day task.
- What We Check
- Age of the most recent review, flagged past 90 days. This is an opportunity signal, not a scored defect.
- Why It Matters
- A prospect comparing options can read a stale review section as a business that's slowed down, even when that isn't true.
- Typical Fix
- A review-generation habit, not a one-time fix.
What's Checked Today, Free vs. Full
The public tool on this site runs a live subset of Step 1 and Step 2 — nine checks total, marked "Free tool" above — the moment you submit a URL. The full inspection Cameron sends by hand runs every check on this page: all four steps, twenty scored checks plus five opportunity signals.
Free, Right Now
All 5 Step 1 connection & security checks, plus 4 of Step 2's on-page checks (viewport, title tag, meta description, H1 count). Nine checks, live, on your own site, in seconds.
Full Inspection
Everything above, plus the remaining Step 2 checks, all of Step 3 (Google PageSpeed Insights), and all of Step 4 (Google Business Profile) — twenty scored checks and five opportunity signals in total.
Free Website Check
Run these nine checks on your own site.
No sign-up, no waiting — the same engine described above, live.
Check My Site