Worked example
A complete inspection, start to finish
This is a full checksheet for a fictional but realistic e-commerce site. Every result, every piece of evidence, and the work queue it produced. The score is genuinely recomputable from the published weights — check our arithmetic.
66 / 99 weight
= 67
Determination: FAIL
Reason: 1 critical fault and 2 major faults recorded. Under the determination rules, a critical fault is disqualifying regardless of score — and two or more major faults are an independent fail. This site would grade C on score alone.
- Reference
- WOF-4821
- Site
- northline.co.nz
- Profile
- E-commerce · Shopify Plus · NZ
- Inspected
- 4 August 2026
- Standard
- SW-1:2026.2
- URLs crawled
- 1,284
- Inspection time
- 7 min 12 s
- Free recheck until
- 1 September 2026
- Checks applied
- 44 of 45
Category results
| Category | State | Passed | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| Crawlability & Accesswt 16 | fail | 4/7 | 72 |
| Indexation & Canonicalswt 16 | fail | 2/6 | 50 |
| Performance & Core Web Vitalswt 14 | fail | 2/5 | 54 |
| On-Page & Content Fitnesswt 14 | advisory | 5/7 | 82 |
| Architecture & Internal Linkswt 11 | fail | 3/5 | 59 |
| Mobile & Accessibilitywt 9 | advisory | 3/4 | 89 |
| Structured Data & Signalswt 8 | advisory | 3/4 | 88 |
| Authority & Off-Pagewt 7 | fail | 2/3 | 71 |
| AI & Answer Engine Readinesswt 5 | fail | 0/3 | 30 |
Prioritised work queue
20 items generated from the failures and advisories, ranked bythe published priority formula— severity × impact ÷ effort. Note that the top item is a two-hour job, not the biggest one.
- 1pri 12Remedy →IX-01failCF
No accidental noindex on indexable pages
X-Robots-Tag: noindex served at the CDN edge on 84 /products/* URLs. Not present in application source, which is why two previous audits missed it.
Owner: DeveloperEffort: S · 0.5–2 hrsImpact: highEst: NZ$80–240 - 2pri 4.5Remedy →AR-01failMF
No orphaned pages
12 service pages reachable only via the XML sitemap. Zero internal links. 4 already earn impressions despite the orphaning.
Owner: SEOEffort: M · 2–8 hrsImpact: highEst: NZ$240–800 - 3pri 4Remedy →AU-02failmf
No link equity lost to broken or redirected inbound links
9 URLs removed in the replatform return 404 while receiving links from 31 referring domains. Best single target has 12 referring domains including two news sites.
Owner: SEOEffort: S · 0.5–2 hrsImpact: mediumEst: NZ$120–480 - 4pri 4Remedy →AI-01failmf
Answer-engine crawlers are not blocked unintentionally
OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot blocked at the CDN by a default bot-mitigation rule. No documented decision on file.
Owner: OwnerEffort: S · 0.5–2 hrsImpact: mediumEst: NZ$120–400 - 5pri 3Remedy →PF-01failMF
Largest Contentful Paint within threshold
Field p75 LCP 4.8 s on mobile across the category template. LCP element is an unsized, lazy-loaded 2,400 px hero behind a render-blocking font stylesheet.
Owner: DeveloperEffort: L · 1–3 daysImpact: highEst: NZ$800–3,200 - 6pri 2.7Remedy →CR-02advisoryMF
Server responds reliably under crawl load
p95 TTFB 1,180 ms. No 5xx recorded, but response time degrades above 8 concurrent requests.
Owner: DeveloperEffort: M · 2–8 hrsImpact: highEst: NZ$240–800
Showing 6 of 20. Full queue included with every inspection.
Full checksheet
Every check applied, with its result and the evidence recorded against it. Passing items are listed too — an inspection that only shows you failures is a sales document, not a report.
Crawlability & Access
| CR-01 | pass | robots.txt does not block indexable revenue paths | wt 4 |
| CR-02 | advisory | Server responds reliably under crawl load p95 TTFB 1,180 ms. No 5xx recorded, but response time degrades above 8 concurrent requests. | wt 3 |
| CR-03 | fail | No redirect chains, loops or soft-404 redirects 214 internal links point at a 3xx. 18 three-hop chains dating from the 2024 replatform. 6 redirects resolve to the homepage rather than an equivalent page. | wt 2 |
| CR-04 | pass | No broken internal links or 404s in navigation | wt 2 |
| CR-05 | pass | XML sitemap is valid, current and clean | wt 2 |
| CR-06 | advisory | Crawl allocation is not consumed by low-value URLs 61% of the crawlable surface is filter permutations under /collections/*. Correctly canonicalised, but facet links remain crawlable. | wt 2 |
| CR-07 | pass | HTTPS enforced and host variants canonicalised | wt 1 |
Indexation & Canonicals
| IX-01 | fail | No accidental noindex on indexable pages X-Robots-Tag: noindex served at the CDN edge on 84 /products/* URLs. Not present in application source, which is why two previous audits missed it. | wt 4 |
| IX-02 | advisory | Canonical tags are self-referencing and consistent 9 canonicals point at redirecting URLs. Expressed as relative rather than absolute URLs site-wide. | wt 3 |
| IX-03 | advisory | Important pages are actually indexed 88% of sitemap-listed URLs indexed. Dominant exclusion reason is "Crawled – currently not indexed" at 7%. | wt 3 |
| IX-04 | pass | Index is not diluted by low-value pages | wt 2 |
| IX-05 | pass | No keyword cannibalisation on priority terms | wt 2 |
| IX-06 | advisory | Pagination and faceting handled correctly Collection pagination is self-canonical and crawlable, but page-one titles and descriptions are duplicated across each series. | wt 1 |
| IX-07 | N/A | International targeting is internally consistent Not applicable — single-locale site. Excluded from the denominator. | wt 1 |
| PF-01 | fail | Largest Contentful Paint within threshold Field p75 LCP 4.8 s on mobile across the category template. LCP element is an unsized, lazy-loaded 2,400 px hero behind a render-blocking font stylesheet. | wt 4 |
| PF-02 | advisory | Interaction to Next Paint within threshold Field p75 INP 340 ms. Attributed to a 480 ms long task on chat widget initialisation. | wt 3 |
| PF-03 | pass | Cumulative Layout Shift within threshold | wt 3 |
| PF-04 | pass | Page weight and request count within budget | wt 2 |
| PF-05 | advisory | Images are correctly sized, compressed and formatted 61 images served above 2× displayed dimensions. Category hero is lazy-loaded and is also the LCP element. | wt 2 |
On-Page & Content Fitness
| OP-01 | advisory | Title tags are unique, present and descriptive All titles unique, but 240 product titles exceed 60 characters and lead with the brand suffix rather than the product name. | wt 3 |
| OP-02 | pass | Meta descriptions present and non-duplicated | wt 1 |
| OP-03 | pass | Heading hierarchy is semantic and singular | wt 2 |
| OP-04 | pass | Priority pages carry substantive content | wt 3 |
| OP-05 | pass | URLs are clean, stable and descriptive | wt 1 |
| OP-06 | advisory | Page type matches the intent of its target query 4 category pages target queries where the live SERP is dominated by buying guides rather than category listings. | wt 2 |
| OP-07 | pass | Time-sensitive content is current | wt 2 |
| AR-01 | fail | No orphaned pages 12 service pages reachable only via the XML sitemap. Zero internal links. 4 already earn impressions despite the orphaning. | wt 3 |
| AR-02 | pass | Priority pages are within three clicks of the homepage | wt 2 |
| AR-03 | advisory | Internal linking supports priority pages Top 5 revenue pages average 2 contextual internal links each. 190 unlinked mentions identified in existing body content. | wt 3 |
| AR-04 | pass | Navigation uses crawlable links | wt 2 |
| AR-05 | pass | Breadcrumb navigation present and marked up | wt 1 |
Mobile & Accessibility
| MB-01 | pass | Mobile and desktop render equivalent content | wt 3 |
| MB-02 | pass | Viewport configured and controls are usable by touch | wt 2 |
| MB-03 | advisory | WCAG 2.2 AA baseline met on key templates 3 moderate axe violations: focus indicators on the filter controls fall below 3:1 contrast. | wt 2 |
| MB-04 | pass | No intrusive interstitials on entry | wt 2 |
Structured Data & Signals
| SD-01 | pass | Structured data is valid and error-free | wt 3 |
| SD-02 | advisory | Appropriate schema types implemented for page purpose Product and Organization implemented and valid. BreadcrumbList and FAQPage opportunities unimplemented on applicable templates. | wt 2 |
| SD-03 | pass | Open Graph and Twitter Card metadata complete | wt 1 |
| SD-04 | pass | Business identity consistent across site and profile | wt 2 |
| AI-01 | fail | Answer-engine crawlers are not blocked unintentionally OAI-SearchBot and PerplexityBot blocked at the CDN by a default bot-mitigation rule. No documented decision on file. | wt 2 |
| AI-02 | advisory | Primary content is available without JavaScript execution 54% of main content present in raw HTML. Product specifications and reviews hydrate client-side. | wt 2 |
| AI-03 | advisory | Content is structured for accurate extraction Specification data presented as prose paragraphs rather than tables on product templates. | wt 1 |
What happens next on a report like this
The owner fixes IX-01 in about an hour — it is a single CDN rule. That alone clears the critical fault and moves the determination from fail to conditional. Clearing AR-01 and PF-01 takes it to a pass. All three are rechecked free within 28 days, and the certificate is issued the moment the last one verifies.