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Website auditing overview

The Market Research toolkit includes powerful website auditing capabilities powered by squirrelscan - a comprehensive tool that analyzes websites against 230+ rules across 21 categories.
Website audits help you discover SEO issues, technical problems, performance bottlenecks, security vulnerabilities, accessibility concerns, and content quality issues.

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What squirrelscan does

squirrelscan provides extensive website auditing by emulating a browser and search crawler to analyze your website’s structure and content.

230+ rules

Comprehensive ruleset covering every aspect of website health

21 categories

Organized into logical groups from SEO to security

Multiple formats

Output as LLM, console, JSON, HTML, or markdown

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Audit categories

The audit engine checks your website across these key areas:

SEO & Content

  • Core SEO: Meta tags, titles, descriptions, canonical URLs
  • Technical SEO: Sitemaps, robots.txt, structured data
  • Content: Heading structure, content analysis, keyword optimization
  • E-E-A-T: Expertise, Experience, Authority, Trustworthiness signals
  • Performance: Page load time, resource usage, caching
  • Crawlability: Search engine accessibility, indexation
  • URL Structure: Clean URLs, proper formatting, keywords
  • Mobile: Responsive design, touch-friendly elements
  • Images: Alt text, optimization, formats, sizing
  • Video: VideoObject schema, accessibility
  • Social Media: Open Graph, Twitter Cards, schema validation

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How it works

The audit process follows a clear three-stage workflow:
1

Crawl the website

Discovers and fetches pages starting from the base URL. The crawler follows internal links and respects robots.txt rules.
squirrel audit https://example.com --coverage quick
2

Analyze against rules

Runs 230+ audit rules on each discovered page, checking for:
  • Missing or incorrect meta tags
  • Broken links and redirect chains
  • Performance issues and slow load times
  • Security vulnerabilities
  • Accessibility problems
  • Content quality issues
3

Generate report

Creates a comprehensive report with:
  • Overall health score (0-100)
  • Category breakdowns with individual scores
  • Issue listings with affected URLs
  • Severity levels (error, warning, notice)
  • Actionable recommendations for fixes
Use --format llm for AI-optimized output that’s 40% more compact than verbose XML.

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Output formats

Generate reports in multiple formats to suit different needs:
Recommended for AI agents. Compact XML/text hybrid optimized for token efficiency.
squirrel audit https://example.com --format llm
Includes:
  • Overall health score and key metrics
  • Issues grouped by category
  • Broken links listing
  • Prioritized recommendations

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Coverage modes

Choose the right scan depth based on your needs:

Quick

25 pages - Seed URLs + sitemaps onlyPerfect for:
  • CI/CD pipeline checks
  • Fast health monitoring
  • Daily status checks
--coverage quick

Surface

100 pages - Smart pattern samplingPerfect for:
  • General audits (default)
  • Template coverage
  • Regular monitoring
--coverage surface

Full

500 pages - Comprehensive crawlPerfect for:
  • Pre-launch audits
  • Deep analysis
  • Complete site health
--coverage full
Surface mode is intelligent - it detects URL patterns like /blog/{slug} or /products/{id} and only crawls one sample per pattern. This makes it efficient for sites with many similar pages.

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Audit results

Every audit generates:

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Health score

An overall score from 0-100 indicating site health:
  • 95-100: Grade A (Excellent)
  • 85-94: Grade B (Good)
  • 70-84: Grade C (Fair)
  • 50-69: Grade D (Poor)
  • 0-49: Grade F (Critical)

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Category scores

Individual scores for each of the 21 categories:
  • Core SEO
  • Technical SEO
  • Performance
  • Security
  • Accessibility
  • Content quality
  • And 15 more…

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Issue severity

All issues are classified by severity level:

Error

Critical issues that must be fixed. Impact: High

Warning

Important issues that should be addressed. Impact: Medium

Notice

Suggestions for improvement. Impact: Low
Issues also have a rank (1-10) indicating their impact on overall site health. Focus on high-rank issues first.

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Two-step workflow

For maximum efficiency, use the two-step approach:
1

Run the audit

Execute the audit and save results to the local database:
squirrel audit https://example.com
This displays console output and stores the audit with a unique ID.
2

Export in desired format

Later, export the same audit in any format without re-crawling:
# Get audit ID from previous run
squirrel report a1b2c3d4 --format llm
squirrel report a1b2c3d4 --format json -o report.json
squirrel report a1b2c3d4 --format html -o report.html
The audit database is stored locally in ~/.squirrel/projects/<project-name>, allowing you to generate multiple report formats from a single crawl.

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Next steps

Install squirrel CLI

Get started with installation on Linux, Mac, or Windows

Run your first audit

Learn how to run audits with different coverage modes

Audit categories

Explore all 21 audit categories and rules

Interpret results

Understand health scores and prioritize fixes

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Resources

squirrelscan website

Visit the official squirrelscan website

Documentation

Complete documentation including rule references
Rule documentation follows this pattern: https://docs.squirrelscan.com/rules/{category}/{rule-id}Example: https://docs.squirrelscan.com/rules/links/external-links

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