Diagnostic Checklist

Search Accessibility Diagnostic Checklist

Diagnostics

  • Initial Accessibility Assessment
    • Is the site indexed?
    • Are the URLs from the XML Sitemap indexed?
    • Are the right pages indexed (without duplicates)?
  • Page Discovery
    • At least one internal link to every page
    • Most important pages linked from home page
    • Comprehensive HTML Sitemaps
    • Good external links
    • XML sitemap
    • Links work without JavaScript, Flash, or images enabled
  • Page Accessibility
    • Single URL for every page (no duplicates)
    • URL exists for every page (URL changes for each new page)
    • Pages have extractable content (particularly images, AJAX, JavaScript, Flash, Silverlight)
    • URLs don't have too many parameters
    • Does Google Webmaster Tools report any crawl errors?
    • Do all versions of home page redirect to single version (including www and non-www)?
    • Are pages blocked with robots.txt or meta tags?
    • Redirects are via 301 (not 302)
    • Not found page returns a status 404/410
  • Indexing Drop Diagnosics
    • Is the site penalized? (Microsoft Live Search Webmaster Center)
    • Did the site change infrastructure? (CMS, redirecting pages, language)
    • Substantial change in site content or external linking