Every figure here comes from scans people actually ran, between 2026-08-14 and 2026-09-14. One scan per site, the most recent. No site is named: these are other people's sites, crawled from a URL someone pasted in, and none of their owners signed up to appear in a write-up.
Measured . Figures are a fixed snapshot, not a live counter.
the median page is far cleaner than the mean
Most sites are fine. The tail is not. #
The median site scores 90/100, and 10 of 103 carry no flags at all. The number worth attention is at the other end: on 17% of sites, at least one page scores under 60. A visitor reads a page, not an average, which is why a report leads with the worst one.
| Distribution of overall site scores out of 100, across 103 sites | ||
|---|---|---|
| Score band | Sites | Count |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 0-19 | 1 | |
| 20-39 | 2 | |
| 40-59 | 7 | |
| 60-79 | 12 | |
| 80-89 | 25 | |
| 90-100 | 56 |
Bigger sites score worse #
This was the clearest pattern in the set, and not one we went looking for. A one-page site is usually hand-written and stays that way. Past a couple of hundred pages, most of that copy is a blog nobody re-reads, and it shows: 95 average for a single page against 70.6 for sites over 200.
| Mean overall site score by number of pages crawled | ||
|---|---|---|
| Site size | Mean score | Sites |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 1 page | 95 | 25 |
| 2-9 pages | 84.4 | 18 |
| 10-49 pages | 87.6 | 17 |
| 50-199 pages | 85 | 22 |
| 200+ pages | 70.6 | 21 |
Structural habits beat word choice #
58% of flags are structural rather than vocabulary. Swapping out buzzwords is the easy part; the habits below are what make a page read like it was generated. Ordered by how many sites carry each one, which is steadier than raw instance counts.
| Structural patterns by share of the 103 sites scanned | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pattern | Share of sites | Instances |
| --- | --- | --- |
| redundant_closing_paragraph | 66% | 2,209 |
| em_dash_frequency | 63% | 2,757 |
| rule_of_three_pattern | 63% | 2,436 |
| vocabulary_diversity | 60% | 2,105 |
| punctuation_density | 53% | 856 |
| listicle_heavy | 51% | 1,524 |
| sentence_length_variance | 41% | 494 |
| generic_opener_pattern | 22% | 165 |
| dangling_ing_puffery | 18% | 213 |
| nominalization_pattern | 17% | 61 |
| latinate_word_ratio | 12% | 28 |
| paragraph_symmetry | 10% | 306 |
| glyph_led_bullets | 6% | 191 |
The words #
By share of sites. 51% of sites carry at least one word from SiteTell's own blacklist. Entries marked * are single common English words, where a share of the hits are ordinary usage rather than a tell: “auth boundaries” and “timezone boundaries” count the same as “beyond boundaries”. Marked rather than quietly dropped, because the multi-word phrases are the ones worth trusting.
| Flagged words and phrases by share of the 103 sites scanned | ||
|---|---|---|
| Pattern | Share of sites | Instances |
| --- | --- | --- |
| unlock* | 35% | 390 |
| landscape* | 29% | 1,769 |
| leverage* | 29% | 705 |
| robust* | 27% | 228 |
| enhance* | 25% | 653 |
| boundaries* | 25% | 168 |
| seamlessly | 22% | 366 |
| facilitate* | 22% | 99 |
| seamless | 21% | 307 |
| showcase* | 19% | 321 |
| streamline* | 18% | 478 |
| crucial* | 17% | 872 |
| align with* | 17% | 208 |
| streamlined* | 17% | 102 |
| game-changer | 14% | 467 |
| when it comes to | 14% | 232 |
| utilize* | 14% | 114 |
| dive into | 14% | 83 |
| elevate* | 13% | 105 |
| furthermore | 10% | 229 |
| delve | 10% | 87 |
| underscores* | 8% | 220 |
| revolutionize | 8% | 219 |
| moreover | 8% | 103 |
| holistic* | 6% | 71 |
How this was measured #
- One scan per site.
- A site scanned eight times would otherwise count eight times and drag every frequency with it.
- Nav and boilerplate stripped before scoring.
- A phrase sitting in a footer on every page is not counted on every page.
- Structural rules need length.
- Most need 100 to 150 words before they run, so a short one-page site can only trip vocabulary rules. That is part of why small sites score higher.
- Em-dash instance counts are not comparable over time.
- That rule changed on 2026-09-12 from one flag per page to one per offending sentence, so read its share of sites rather than its instance count.
- Score is 100 minus penalties.
- A short page has less opportunity to lose points, so compare pages of similar length.
Your own site is not in here unless you scanned it. If you want the same read on your copy, it is free and takes about twenty seconds: scan your site.