Methodology

How we certify and compare.

First the certification rule every site is measured against, then how the national 'better than X%' percentile comes about and, when enough sites share the sector, the sector percentile. It is not a marketing claim and not a leaderboard.

The certification rule

Every pillar first, then the average.

The mark comes down to two checks you can verify yourself. The diagram shows the order they apply in and what happens when either fails.

The mark is a hard rule: every pillar at least 60 and an average of at least 80. A pillar that could not be measured never counts as passed.

The percentile

How 'better than X%' comes about.

The percentile is separate from the mark. It compares your score with the rest of the dataset, and only when that dataset is large enough.

Schematic example, not real data: 8 of the 13 domains (you included) score lower than you, so "better than 62%". We only show real percentiles from 10 scanned domains.

In three steps

Per domain we only count the newest completed scan.
If the set has fewer than 10 domains, we show nothing.
The percentile is the share of domains scoring lower than you, rounded to a whole number.

What do we compare?

Each comparison uses the newest completed scan per domain. Older repeat scans of the same domain are excluded so frequent re-audits do not skew the set.

We compare the overall score (average of the four pillars) and, separately, each pillar score. An owner can pick one of 13 fixed sectors at checkout or in the account. When a site has a sector, we show 'better than X% of the sites in this sector' next to the national percentile.

When do we show a percentile?

The national percentile only appears once there are at least 10 distinct scanned domains in the dataset. The sector percentile only appears when at least 10 domains in the same sector have a completed, complete scan. Below that the percentage is too thin statistically; we show nothing instead of a misleading figure, and for a small sector only the national percentile.

There are no public leaderboards or 'top 10' lists on small samples. The mark remains a hard threshold (average ≥ 80, every pillar ≥ 60), independent of percentiles.

What the numbers are not

A high percentile does not prove full WCAG conformance or safety against every threat. It only situates your score among sites we have scanned so far. The owner picks the sector; WebYes does not verify it.

Engine updates (new seo-cli version) can shift scores. On a paid report timeline we flag methodology changes when the engine version changes.