Readability checker

Why readability matters

Most people skim a web page. Short sentences and everyday words let them find the answer and act on it: call, book, buy. Long sentences full of long words make them work, and many leave.

Google does not score readability. Its guidance asks for content made for people, and says its ranking systems "are designed to prioritize helpful, reliable information that's created to benefit people" (Google: creating helpful content). Asked whether it has a preferred word count, the same page answers: "No, we don't." A readable page is one people use, and that is the point of checking.

What this checker measures

• Words, sentences and reading time. Reading time assumes 238 words a minute, a commonly cited average for adults reading non-fiction.
• Reading ease. The Flesch reading-ease formula, from 1948, scores text from about 0 to 100 using sentence length and word length. Higher is easier: 60 to 70 is plain English. It was written for English, and the result says so when a page is in another language.
• The longest sentences. Every sentence over 25 words is counted, and the longest are listed so you can split them.
• Thin content. The same check our audit runs: under 250 words of body text. Word count is not a ranking factor, but a page that short rarely answers a question fully.

Only the page's main content is read. The menu, header and footer are left out, and headings and short list items do not count towards the score, because they are not sentences anybody wrote as sentences.

Next: see the page's most used words, or check its headings.