Audit

Audit Standard 2026.4

A technical SEO audit standard you can inspect.

The MaxiMarket Audit Standard is the published rule set behind every audit. It defines technical readiness for search engines, AI crawlers, structured data consumers and social platforms: crawlability and indexability, canonical URLs, metadata, Schema.org JSON-LD, Product and Offer data, AI crawler access and Open Graph. Each rule states what it checks, why it matters, where its authority comes from and how much it counts.

Explore all 94 rulesHow the score works
Version
2026.4Published 2026-10-01, frozen
Rules
9474 scored, the rest reported only
Observations
34Neutral facts, never scored
Cited sources
76Each with a verification date
Technical Score
score = 100 × earned weight ÷ applicable weight
Digest
sha256:47f0aa4a0f3611ca…
Earlier versions (superseded)
2026.32026.2

Five views, one set of rules

What the standard covers.

A rule can matter to several readers. It appears in each relevant view, but it is checked, and counted, only once.

Anatomy of a rule

Every rule is documented the same way.

Checks
The exact condition evaluated on the page.
Expected state
What a passing page looks like.
Applies when
When the rule is relevant; otherwise it is not applicable.
Why it matters
The effect on search engines, AI systems or other readers.
How to fix
The change that resolves the finding.
Authority
Requirement, open standard, platform advice or MaxiMarket advice.
Sources
The documentation it rests on, each with a verification date.
Weight
1, 2 or 3 in the Technical Score, with the reason, or not scored.

Example from Audit Standard 2026.4

SEO-CANONICAL-001 Canonical URL is declared

Official platform recommendationRecommendedWeight 1

Checks
Whether the returned HTML declares a rel="canonical" link.
Expected state
The page declares a <link rel="canonical"> pointing to its preferred URL.
Sources
Google Search Central, IETF

Read the full SEO-CANONICAL-001 rule

Where the rules come from

Documented guidance, with visible authority.

MaxiMarket selects the documented requirements and recommendations that can be checked reliably from outside a website, records their authority and applies them consistently. A Google requirement, an open web standard and MaxiMarket’s own advice are never presented as the same thing.

Cited sources by ecosystem
Ecosystem Publishers include Sources
Search engines Google Search Central, Bing 44
Web standards WHATWG, W3C, IETF, Sitemaps.org 19
Structured data Schema.org, ISO 4217 5
Social platforms Open Graph protocol 1
AI platforms OpenAI, Anthropic, Perplexity, Apple, Meta 7

Five authority levels

Official search-engine requirement
A search engine documents it as required for a specific outcome, such as Google eligibility.
Strongest external authority
Open standard / Schema.org
Defined by an open standard or vocabulary: HTML, WCAG, IETF RFCs, Schema.org, Sitemaps, Open Graph.
Official platform recommendation
Recommended in official platform documentation, such as Google Search Central or an AI platform.
Accepted best practice
Widely accepted practice with a cited source, but no official requirement.
MaxiMarket recommendation
MaxiMarket’s own advice. Never presented as a search engine or platform requirement.
MaxiMarket methodology

Why it is published and versioned

Why a standard

100 isn’t a marketing number.

Instead of a black-box SEO percentage, MaxiMarket publishes a transparent definition of technical readiness. A Technical Score of 100 means every applicable scored rule in this published standard passed: 100% Technical Readiness against version 2026.4, verifiable rule by rule. It is not a ranking promise.

Versioned and stable

A published version never changes.

Each report records the standard version it followed, and the digest above identifies this version’s exact content. Improving a rule means a new version, so results stay comparable and explainable over time.

Browse the rule explorerHow a MaxiMarket audit worksAudit a page against the standard