How it works

How we score your website, and why it's fair

Every month we check every UK council website on the everyday tasks residents come for, score each page, and publish the results with a report for every council.

See the leaderboard

Every month we simulate a resident on each council's most common tasks: find the page in Google, follow it as a resident would, then give feedback on the content. It is the same idea as the national annual review of council websites that ran until 2017, done automatically and published openly. Read the story behind it.

What happens on the 15th of each month

1

Choose the tasks

Each council type gets its own 5 public tasks, taken from the outcome library. Subscribers get 100.

Browse the outcome library

2

Find the page

On the 15th we search Google as a resident would, and find the page the council would want them to land on.

3

Score it

We check whether people can find it, whether it is clear, and whether it gives residents what they came for.

4

Publish the results

The leaderboard, a report for every council and the figures behind our articles all come from the same public data.

See the leaderboard

5

Point to the fix

Each problem we find links to a fix guide, so a web team knows what to change.

Browse the fix guides

6

Check again

Next month's run shows what changed, in public.

Keeping it fair

Full method on Insight
  • Every council is checked the same way, on the same day, for the tasks that fit its type.
  • The list of councils is the open council register. If we have your website or council type wrong, tell us and it is corrected for the next run.
  • Scores are automated and opinionated. They are a starting point for your own user research, not a replacement for it.