Website Grader: Quick Performance, Mobile, SEO and Security tests

Website Grader is an Internet service to grade websites based on core metrics such as performance, mobile support, search engine optimization and security.

The service is without doubt not the most complete application of its kind, but it is fast and provides actionable advice when it finds issues that can be fixed to improve the overall grade of the website.

All you do is type or paste a URL that you want to check and hit the "get your answer" button afterwards. The email field displayed prominently on the site is optional.

Website Grader

The tests start and should not take longer than a minute to complete. If there is something to criticize, it is the complete lack of progress indicators. You are bombarded with quotes during that time though.

An overall score, a rating in words (this site is good), and individual performance, mobile, SEO and security scores are displayed near the top.

A click on a score scrolls down to the section detailing what is good, okay, and not so good about the site.

For instance, you may see there that the page size is quite okay but the number of page requests are not.

Website Grader runs seven performance tests in total that test a website's size, HTTP requests, loading time, browser caching, page redirects, compression, and render blocking.

Each entry offers a short explanation and a "read more" link to find out what you can do about a particular issue (or what you have done right).

The mobile test checks whether the site is reponsive, and whether the site's viewport is properly configured for mobile visitors.

The SEO test is a bit of a let down, as it checks only four on-page metrics. It checks the page title length and keyword repetition, the meta description length and relevancy, whether headings are used, and whether a sitemap is linked in the source.

Finally, security checks whether the site supports SSL certificates.

Verdict

Website Grader is not as technical as Google PageSpeed or YSlow, but it is ideal for a quick test as it checks several core metrics. It is a handy tool thanks to it being fast and efficient.

It appears however that Website Grader is not working for all sites right now, and that it may come to inaccurate conclusions at times especially when it comes to mobile support.