How AdGateScore Scoring Works
The AdGateScore Scoring System
AdGateScore evaluates your website across five distinct modules, each measuring a different aspect of ad network readiness. Your overall score is a weighted combination of these module scores, giving you a single number that represents how prepared your site is for monetization.
The Five Scoring Modules
1. Performance (Weight: 20%)
The Performance module measures how fast and responsive your website is. It checks Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift), server response time, total page size, and mobile performance. Ad networks care deeply about performance because slow sites lead to lower ad viewability and worse user experiences.
Key metrics include page load time, Time to First Byte, resource optimization (images, scripts, CSS), and mobile rendering speed. Sites scoring above 80 in Performance load quickly on both desktop and mobile and provide a smooth browsing experience.
2. Content Quality (Weight: 25%)
Content Quality evaluates the substance of your website's content. It looks at article length, content originality, readability scores, the presence of essential pages (About, Contact, Privacy Policy), and the overall depth and breadth of your content library. This module carries the highest weight because content is the primary factor ad networks evaluate.
The scanner checks word count per page, heading structure, image-to-text ratio, and internal linking density. Thin content pages (under 300 words) are flagged as issues. Sites with consistently long-form, well-structured content score highest in this module.
3. Policy Compliance (Weight: 20%)
Policy Compliance checks whether your site meets the legal and safety requirements that ad networks mandate. This includes HTTPS usage, privacy policy presence and completeness, terms of service, cookie consent mechanisms, content safety (no prohibited content), and GDPR/CCPA compliance signals.
Every ad network requires certain compliance standards. Missing a privacy policy or running an HTTP-only site will result in automatic rejection from virtually every network. This module ensures you meet the non-negotiable baseline requirements.
4. Site Architecture (Weight: 15%)
Site Architecture evaluates the technical structure and organization of your website. It checks navigation depth, internal linking patterns, mobile responsiveness, sitemap presence, robots.txt configuration, schema markup usage, and overall accessibility. A well-structured site is easier for ad networks to integrate with and provides better ad placement opportunities.
The scanner also checks for broken links, orphaned pages, and redirect chains. Clean architecture improves both your ad network readiness and your search engine rankings.
5. Traffic Signals (Weight: 20%)
Traffic Signals assesses your site's traffic volume and quality based on publicly available data. It estimates monthly visitors, evaluates traffic source diversity (organic search, social, direct, referral), checks geographic distribution, and analyzes engagement signals. Higher traffic from quality sources translates to better ad revenue and easier network approval.
This module uses external data sources to estimate your traffic. Actual traffic numbers may differ from estimates, but the scanner provides a reasonable approximation that aligns with how ad networks evaluate publisher traffic.
The Grade Scale
- A (90-100): Excellent. Your site meets or exceeds the requirements for premium ad networks.
- B (75-89): Good. You qualify for most networks and are close to premium tier.
- C (60-74): Fair. You qualify for entry and growth networks but need work for scale and premium tiers.
- D (40-59): Below average. Focus on addressing critical and important fixes.
- F (0-39): Needs significant work. Start with the basics: content, HTTPS, and essential pages.
How the Overall Score Is Calculated
Your overall AdGateScore is the weighted average of your five module scores. The weights (20%, 25%, 20%, 15%, 20%) reflect the relative importance each factor has in real ad network approval decisions. Content Quality has the highest weight because it's the single most important factor across all networks.
For example, if your module scores are Performance: 72, Content Quality: 85, Policy Compliance: 90, Site Architecture: 68, and Traffic Signals: 55, your overall score would be: (72 x 0.20) + (85 x 0.25) + (90 x 0.20) + (68 x 0.15) + (55 x 0.20) = 74.9, rounded to 75 with a grade of B.