# What a score means

Updated November 1, 2026.

A score out of 100 says how well formed a site’s pages are, for a crawler and for an assistant. It does not say whether an assistant cites the site.

## What does a score of 100 mean?

That every page read passed every rule clickd checks, counted by weight across the four stages. The pages are well formed for a crawler and an assistant: they can be reached, understood, trusted and acted on. It does not mean an assistant cites the site.

> **Well formed is not the same as cited.** A site can score 100 and never be quoted by an assistant. Whether it is quoted is measured separately, by asking assistants the questions buyers ask.

## Does a good score get a site cited?

Not on its own, and clickd does not promise it. What it has measured is a pattern. Gemini was asked the real searches of the sites run with clickd, the ones each one’s Search Console shows people using. As of October 24, 2026, 7 of them were cited for their own searches, each in first place for at least one, and three of them for half or more of the searches asked. 9 of them turned up among the sources Gemini gave for the questions clickd asks about every line of work. Asking has been paused since October 23, 2026, so these figures are not current.

Across 1,890 sites Gemini answered questions about, a cited site outscored an uncited one 85% of the time. That shows well formed pages and being cited go together; it does not show that one causes the other. Each report shows the answers themselves, so a site can see where it is cited, not only its score.

How the questions are asked, how a citation is decided, and what the comparison does and does not show are set out in [the methodology](https://clickd.com/methodology).

## Four stages

Each stage is the share of its checks that pass, counting each check by its rule’s weight. A rule about the whole site, such as whether `robots.txt` lets crawlers in, is one check. A rule about pages is one check on every page it applies to, so a rule checked on 200 pages is 200 checks. A check waiting for a person is left out until a person reads it.

Say a stage has two rules on a site of 200 pages. One weighs 4 and passes on 180 pages; the other weighs 2 and passes on all 200. The stage is 4 × 180 + 2 × 200 over 4 × 200 + 2 × 200: 1,120 of 1,200, which rounds to 93.

## How the stages add up

The four stages are added by their share of the score. For a site whose stages came out like this:

| Stage | Stage score | Its share | Adds |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Access | 100 | 35% | 35.0 |
| Understand | 82 | 30% | 24.6 |
| Trust | 64 | 20% | 12.8 |
| Act | 100 | 15% | 15.0 |
| Score |  |  | 87 |

## When a site is closed

Some rules close a site to crawlers when they fail, such as a `robots.txt` that lets nobody in. If one fails for the whole site, on the home page, or on more than half the pages, the score is held at 20 or less, whatever else passes. A score for pages nobody can reach would mislead.

## A site that is not live yet

A draft read sets aside the rules a closed site cannot pass, such as a sitemap search engines can see. The score then says how ready the site is for the day it opens.

## Why a score moves with nothing changed

- The rulebook changed. `mttr_changes` says when two reads were judged by different rulebooks.
- The read reached different pages, often because it stopped at its limit.
- A page that was slow or down the first time answered the second.

## Sources

- [In-depth guide to how Google Search works](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works), Google Search Central: A page that follows every guideline is still not promised a place in search.
- [AI features and your website](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/ai-features), Google Search Central: Being indexed and eligible is not a promise of being shown in AI answers.