This article gives information on how to use the Readability feature to detect the reading level of website pages.
The readability feature categorizes the difficulty of the vocabulary on a website into comprehension and school grade values. This helps website owners improve the experience for their users. There are two methods to choose between.
The Flesch–Kincaid readability test is used for English text and it measures word length, number of syllables per word, and sentence length. The formula for the Flesch (FRES) test is:
206.835 - 1.015 (total words/total sentences) - 84.6 (total syllables/total words)
The resulting scores and their meaning:
Readability Score | School Grade (United States) | Additional Information |
100.00–90.00 | 5th grade | Very easy to read. Easily understood by students who are generally around 11 years old. |
90.0–80.0 | 6th grade | Easy to read. Conversational English for consumers. |
80.0–70.0 | 7th grade | Fairly easy to read. |
70.0–60.0 | 8th & 9th grade | Plain English. Easily understood by students in these grades, who are generally 13-15 years old. |
60.0–50.0 | 10th to 12th grade | Fairly difficult to read, students in these grades are generally 15-18 years old. |
50.0–30.0 | College | Difficult to read. |
30.0–10.0 | College graduate | Very difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates. |
10.0–0.0 | Professional | Extremely difficult to read. Best understood by university graduates. |
Find out more about the Flesch Kincaid Readability test.
When we are not able to generate a readability score for a page, the following error messages describe the reasons:
The LIX method is used for foreign languages and the readability formula is as follows:
LIX = A/B + (C x 100)/A, where:
C = Number of long words (More than 6 letters)
Find out more about the LIX readability test.
Clear language rules also affect the overall readability scores. Generally, these rules apply:
Active voice:
Monkeys adore bananas.
The cashier counted the money.
The dog chased the squirrel.
Passive voice:
Bananas are adored by monkeys.
The money was counted by the cashier.
The squirrel was chased by the dog.
Set up the Quality Assurance Readability features:
Click Settings (the gear icon) at the top of the Domain Overview page. The Admin Settings page opens.
The Settings button is only available to site admins.
Select Edit Domain.
The Edit Domain pane opens.
In the Features section:
This section gives information about how to access the Quality Assurance module.
Click Quality Assurance (the checkbox icon), on the Dashboard toolbar.
The Readability by Score section shows the number of pages that have a readability level in each category.
On the same row as a readability score, click on the number in the Pages column.
The Pages with Score pane opens.
It is possible to exclude a segment of the webpage from the readability scan.
For more information, see the user guide articles:
The History Center stores all Readability issues and details from previous scans.
Click History Center (bar graph icon), located on the top menu bar.
The History Center landing page opens.
The page contains the following layout:
Domain: In the first field, click to expand the list of domains.
Module: In the second field, click to expand the list of available modules.
Viewing as Profile: This shows the profile that is being used.
For instructions on how to add a profile, see the Add a Profile section of the user guide article:
Check frequency: The frequency of the check.
Important: The Dashboard always shows data with the default profile selected. To change this, select a new profile (click the drop-down arrow to see the available profiles). Please be aware that when you change the profile, the numbers on all three sections inside the Performance module update accordingly.
Readability levels: Total number of issues per readability level criteria, broken down into category icons that represent the reading grade level.
For more information, see the user guide article:
The available reports for the Quality Assurance module are:
For more information, see the user guide article:
This section contains the answers to frequently asked questions about this article topic.
Why is there no Readability score on some of my pages?
Answer: This can happen for a number of reasons:
For more details about this issue, see the help center FAQ:
Why is there no Readability score on some of my pages?
For more information, see the user guide articles:
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