Changelog

Five new checks land: Google Knowledge Graph MID detection (we now query Google's entity database directly, not infer from sameAs), tier-weighted press coverage (a Wall Street Journal mention counts more than an aggregator), backlink quality (authority + anchor diversity, not raw counts), local business presence (GMB + local SERP for regional brands), and duplicate-content detection. The JSON-LD walker now descends into Google-recommended nested placements (Review inside Product, Author inside Article). A silent footer-content bug that zeroed about/team/contact/social checks for most sites is fixed. Public /methodology/sources page shipped with versioned, citable snapshots of every AI platform's documentation.

The audit now inspects a representative sample of pages across your site instead of grading every schema type against the homepage alone. Multi-page sites will see fairer scores — schemas that live on inner pages (articles, author bios, tutorials, breadcrumbs) are now credited where they actually exist.

Additional audit checks shipped across crawler access, structured data, content quality, technical foundation, and content authenticity. No weight changes; scores stay comparable to v2.0.0.

Expanded entity recognition coverage, strengthened answer-prominence tracking across the engine fleet, rebalanced category weights to reflect 2026 citation reality. Trend charts render a marker on the changeover date so score shifts are legible.

First published methodology. Established the rubric structure, the engine fleet, and the versioning discipline we carry forward.