Why the SEO score and the technical health score differ
How the SEO score on Overview and the technical health score from the crawl are calculated, what the 7 analysis dimensions are, and why the two numbers differ.
Open this screen in the panelThe panel shows two different scores: the SEO score (the overall SEO analysis score) and the technical health score (the crawl result). They answer different questions, so they usually differ. Technical health asks “how many technical errors does my site have?”, while the SEO score asks “how is my site doing in search overall?”
Which score appears where
| Place | What it shows |
|---|---|
| The big number on the SEO Health Score card on Overview | The SEO analysis score (the average when you have several sites). With no analysis yet, the average technical health. |
| The Technical health row on the same card | The average technical health score of crawled sites. |
| Site page → SEO Analysis | That site's SEO score and its 7 dimensions. |
| The “Health …” label at the top of the site page and the General settings description | That site's technical health score. |
The card also has a Pages free of critical/major issues row (the share of pages with no critical or serious issue) and a Share of sites crawled row.
How technical health is calculated
Technical health is calculated at the end of every crawl. Each issue record found by the crawl adds a penalty based on its severity. The issue count is divided by the number of pages crawled, so large and small sites are compared fairly.
| Severity | Weight |
|---|---|
| Critical | 55% |
| Serious | 30% |
| Warning | 12% |
| Info | 3% |
Formula: 100 − 100 × (0.55 × critical/pages + 0.30 × serious/pages + 0.12 × warning/pages + 0.03 × info/pages). Each ratio is capped at 1 and the result never goes below 0.
Example: a 100-page crawl with 5 critical, 20 serious, 50 warning and 80 info records. The penalty is 100 × (0.55 × 0.05 + 0.30 × 0.20 + 0.12 × 0.50 + 0.03 × 0.80) ≈ 17 points, so technical health is 83.
If you left something that way on purpose, mark it Intentional on Technical Audit. The record drops out of the count, and technical health and the analysis are recalculated straight away. Details: Intentional issues and auto-fix.
The SEO score: 7 analysis dimensions
The SEO score is the weighted average of the seven dimensions of the SEO analysis. Each dimension is scored from 0 to 100.
| Dimension | What it looks at | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Technical health | Crawl rules, broken links, meta and canonical (the technical health score itself) | 25 |
| Performance | PageSpeed, Core Web Vitals (mobile-weighted) | 10 |
| Indexing | Google index status, canonical, IndexNow | 15 |
| Content | Thin content, missing meta, E-E-A-T, opportunities | 15 |
| Visibility | Search Console clicks/impressions, keyword positions | 15 |
| Authority | Backlink profile, toxic share, competitor gap | 10 |
| AI visibility | Share in AI engines, llms.txt, bot access | 10 |
A dimension without data shows “No data” and is left out of the average; its weight is spread over the remaining dimensions. A missing connection therefore doesn't punish the score with a zero, but the score rests on less data.
Why the two scores differ
- High technical health, low SEO score: The site is technically clean, but visibility, authority or AI visibility is weak. Falling clicks or a thin backlink profile, for example, pull the SEO score down.
- Low technical health, fairly good SEO score: There are technical issues, but traffic and rankings are strong. Technical health is only a quarter of the SEO score.
- They update at different times: Technical health changes whenever a crawl finishes. The SEO analysis is refreshed after crawls, weekly, and with Analyze now.
- Portfolio view: With All sites selected, the big number averages sites that have an analysis, while Technical health averages crawled sites; the two groups may not be the same.
How to raise the score
- Open SEO Analysis on the site page and find the lowest dimension. Why this score? explains the reason.
- Connect the sources shown in grey in the Data coverage card.
- Work through the Prioritised findings table in impact × effort order, or start a workspace from the plan: SEO analysis.
FAQ
I fixed the issues but the score didn't change. Why?
Technical health updates when a new crawl finishes. Press Crawl now on the site page; when the crawl is done the analysis refreshes too.
Which score should I follow?
Follow the SEO score for overall progress and technical health for technical cleanup. The Technical cleanup goal in workspaces targets the technical health score.
Related articles
- SEO analysis: score, findings, plan, share link and PDFHow to read the per-site SEO Analysis page, use the prioritised findings, turn the 30/60/90-day plan into a workspace, and share the analysis as a link or PDF.
- Technical Audit: crawls, severities and the issue listLearn how to start a crawl on the Technical Audit page, filter issues by severity, and view or export the affected URLs as CSV.
- Accept audit issues as intentional and fix them automaticallyHow to mark issues you left on purpose as Intentional, undo that, and fix issues automatically with rules or a GitHub pull request.
- Overview dashboard: arrange cards and pick a date rangeHow to read the score and KPI cards on Overview, rearrange the dashboard with drag and drop, hide cards and change the date range.