Audit

Audit Standard / 2026.4

Rule explorer: Audit Standard 2026.4

Every check that defines technical readiness in MaxiMarket Audit Standard 2026.4, exactly as the audit applies it. Open a rule to see what it checks, why it matters, how to fix it, where its authority comes from and how much it counts.

Guides by topic: technical SEO audit rules, AI readiness, structured data and ecommerce product data.

Version
2026.4
Status
Current
Published
2026-10-01
Rules
94
Scored
74
Observations
34

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

Filter

Showing 5 rules and 0 observations.

Rules

Rules pass or fail. A failed rule becomes a finding in your report; scored rules also count toward the Technical Score.

Headings and semantic structure

SEO-HEADING-001MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practicePage has a top-level headingDocumentWarning when failedNot scoredTechnical SearchAI DiscoveryMachine Readability
What this checks
Whether the returned HTML contains at least one h1 element.
Why it matters
A visible top-level heading helps visitors, assistive technology and automated readers identify the page subject. This is a MaxiMarket content-structure recommendation.
How to fix
Mark up the main page heading, such as the product name, as an <h1>.
Expected
The page has an h1 element that names its main content.
Applies to
Every retrieved page. Non-scoring: a MaxiMarket recommendation.
Authority
MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceMaxiMarket recommendation. No search engine, standard or platform requires this.
Technical Score
Not scoredA MaxiMarket recommendation; Google says there is no ideal heading structure.
How MaxiMarket detects it
Reports when the returned HTML contains no h1 element. Headings created by client-side JavaScript are visible only in browser-based audits.
Sources

Indexing and snippet directives

INDEX-DIRECTIVE-CONFLICT-001MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceRobots rules for the same crawler do not conflictIndexingWarning when failedNot scoredTechnical Search
What this checks
Whether robots rules addressed to the same target contradict each other.
Why it matters
Google documents that the more restrictive rule applies when robots rules conflict, so a stray restrictive declaration silently wins. Avoiding conflicts is a MaxiMarket recommendation.
How to fix
Keep one consistent set of robots rules per target across the robots meta tags and the X-Robots-Tag header.
Expected
Each target (all crawlers, or one named crawler) receives one consistent set of rules.
Applies to
Pages with robots meta or X-Robots-Tag declarations; conflicts are judged within one target (all crawlers, or one named crawler).
Authority
MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceMaxiMarket recommendation. No search engine, standard or platform requires this.
Technical Score
Not scoredA MaxiMarket recommendation: search engines resolve conflicts deterministically (most restrictive wins), so the outcome depends on intent.
How MaxiMarket detects it
Within one target (robots meta named robots plus unprefixed X-Robots-Tag directives for all crawlers, or one named crawler), reports index or all together with noindex or none, or follow or all together with nofollow or none. Combinations across different targets are not treated as conflicts.
Sources

International (hreflang)

INTL-HREFLANG-002MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceEach hreflang language is declared onceIndexingWarning when failedNot scoredTechnical Search
What this checks
Whether any normalized hreflang language is declared more than once on the page.
Why it matters
Declaring the same language for several URLs makes the intended alternate ambiguous. This is a MaxiMarket consistency recommendation.
How to fix
Keep one alternate link per hreflang value and remove or correct the duplicates.
Expected
Each language or language-region value maps to one alternate URL.
Applies to
Pages with at least one hreflang declaration.
Authority
MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceMaxiMarket recommendation. No search engine, standard or platform requires this.
Technical Score
Not scoredA MaxiMarket recommendation without an external requirement.
How MaxiMarket detects it
Reports when the same case-normalized hreflang value appears on more than one inspected alternate link.
Sources
MaxiMarket recommendation without an external source.

Structured data (general)

STRUCTURED-JSONLD-003MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceJSON-LD declares a usable typeStructured dataWarning when failedNot scoredTechnical SearchAI DiscoveryMachine Readability
What this checks
Whether valid JSON-LD declares at least one usable @type.
Why it matters
Schema.org organizes its vocabulary as types with associated properties, and structured data features are defined per type. MaxiMarket flags untyped JSON-LD because consumers cannot tell what it describes.
How to fix
Add an @type with a Schema.org type name to each entity in the JSON-LD.
Expected
Each structured data entity declares a Schema.org type, such as Product.
Applies to
Pages with at least one valid JSON-LD block.
Authority
MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceMaxiMarket recommendation. No search engine, standard or platform requires this.
Technical Score
Not scoredA MaxiMarket recommendation; untyped JSON-LD is not invalid.
How MaxiMarket detects it
Reports when at least one JSON-LD block is valid but no normalized @type name is found within the bounded traversal.
Sources

Crawl control and crawler access

CRAWL-ACCESS-005MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceSearch crawlers are not restricted only by the wildcard groupIndexingInfo when failedNot scoredTechnical SearchAI Discovery
What this checks
Whether Googlebot or Bingbot is disallowed for the audited URL through the User-agent: * group because no group of its own names it.
Why it matters
A crawler without its own group follows the * group. A broad * rule written for scrapers or AI crawlers then restricts search crawlers too, often unintentionally. This explains the cause of the restriction; the restriction itself is reported and scored once by its own rule.
How to fix
If search crawlers should crawl the page, add a group for them, for example "User-agent: Googlebot" and "User-agent: Bingbot" with the rules you intend (an empty "Disallow:" allows everything), and keep the restrictive rules in the * group for other bots.
Expected
Search crawler access is stated explicitly: a group that names the crawler, or a * group that does not restrict the page.
Applies to
Every retrieved page whose origin returned robots.txt or 404/410 for it; not evaluated when robots.txt is unavailable, returns a server error or exceeds the inspection limits.
Authority
MaxiMarket recommendation · MaxiMarket best practiceMaxiMarket diagnostic recommendation; informational and not scored.
Technical Score
Not scoredDiagnostic: the restriction is already reported and scored by CRAWL-ACCESS-001 (Googlebot) or CRAWL-ACCESS-004 (Bingbot), so it is never penalized twice.
How MaxiMarket detects it
The Googlebot (CRAWL-ACCESS-001) and Bingbot (CRAWL-ACCESS-004) evaluations; reported when either crawler is disallowed and no group names it, so the * group applied. Not evaluated when robots.txt is unavailable, answers 5xx, or exceeds the inspection limits; a 404/410 robots.txt allows everything.
Sources