How The Trust Grader Works, Step By Step
What happens after you press Check: where your address goes, who reads your page, and what I keep.
The short version. A real browser opens your home page and the pages one click away. Plain code measures 17 things. An AI reads your words for 17 more, against rules I wrote, and it has to quote the words it found. Then the points add up. It takes about 120 seconds.
Step By Step
- Your address reaches my serverthe first second
When you press Check, your address goes to my own server, a rented computer at Pair Networks in the United States. First it looks if the same page was checked in the last 30 days. If it was, you get that grade right away, for free. - A real browser opens your pageabout 15 seconds
A real Chrome browser opens your home page at laptop size, 1280 by 900 points, the way a stranger would see it. It takes a picture of the first screen, before any scrolling. That picture is what you see in the grader. - It opens the pages one click awayabout 40 seconds
It also opens up to 9 of your pages that are one click from the home page, like About, Contact or Work. What it finds there counts two thirds, because a stranger has to click to see it. - Plain code measures what it canabout 5 seconds
17 of the 34 checks need no AI. They are measured or counted: the size of your text, how fast the page opens, the menu, pop-ups, the dates and the copyright year. It also asks Wikipedia if there is a page about you. - An AI reads your wordsabout 40 to 50 seconds
The other 17 checks need someone to read, like "who do you help" or "are there real testimonials". The text of your pages goes to Claude, an AI made by Anthropic, together with the rules I wrote for each of these checks. For every check it has to quote the words it found on your page. You see those words when you open a check in the grader, so you can tell why it went green, amber or red. - It reads them twicea few more seconds
The AI is asked twice, at the same time. If the two answers agree, that is the answer. If they differ, it is asked a third time, and the answer that came up twice wins. I added this because one single reading could give a slightly different grade on the same page. - The points add up
Green gets full points, amber half, red none. The points add up to your score out of 100, and to your label: Trustable, Credible with some gaps, or Hard to trust yet. You see the score, the six groups, and the three checks worth the most points to fix.
Where Your Address Goes
Four places, and only for this one job.
What Code Measures, What The AI Reads
Half of the grade is plain measuring. The other half is reading, done by an AI with written rules.
Measured by code (17)
- A home of your own
- An About page
- A way to reach you
- A recognizable identity
- Recent, dated work you can see
- Copyright year is current
- No signs of abandonment
- Text size, line length, paragraph space
- A menu I can find my way through
- No distraction
- No decoration overload
- No walls of text
- A page that opens fast
- Not saying "we" when you are one person
- Helping, not pushing
- A balance of "I" and "you"
- A Wikipedia page about you
Read by the AI, with my rules (17)
- Your full name
- Your face
- Where you are
- Who you help, in one sentence
- What you stand for
- Real examples of your work
- Others cite and mention you
- Books you wrote
- Testimonials
- Talks and interviews
- Results you can show
- Something useful you give away
- Titles and awards
- Honest about limits
- You point to others too
- Things only you could have written
- Care in the details
Why each check is there, and how much it weighs, is on the research page.
Why The Same Page Gets The Same Score
Two things. The grade of a page is kept for 30 days, so if you or someone else checks the same page again, you get the same grade, without asking the AI again. And the AI is asked twice, as you read above, so one odd reading does not change your score.
If you change your page and want a new grade, you will get it after the 30 days.
What I Keep, And For How Long
- The grade and the picture of your first screen: 30 days.
- The text read from your pages: 8 days, in case something went wrong and I need to look.
- The details of the check itself: 2 days.
- Your internet address: never kept as it is. A scrambled version of it is used only to count your 3 free checks a day.
- A testimonial, if you send one: your words, your name and your link, kept private until I read it. If I publish it, it stays on the testimonials page until you ask me to take it down.
- Pages that score 50 or more can appear in the gallery of real pages, with the name and the picture of the first screen.
I don't sell any of it, and I don't use it for anything else.
What It Cannot See
It only sees what your page shows to a stranger on a first visit. It cannot see the good work you have done, what your clients say about you in private, or how well known you are somewhere else. A low score means your page does not show it yet. It says nothing about you as a person.
Limits
You can check 3 new pages a day. Pages already checked in the last 30 days open right away and don't count. Each check costs me real money, so when many people come on the same day, the grader may stop taking new pages until the next day.