Methodology
How we scan, score and report — every rule public
Every figure in our sector reports and audits comes from this process. If a rule changes, this page changes first. The scanner identifies itself as BlackAdsAuditBot and links here.
Quick answer
We list businesses from public sources only (OpenStreetMap, Google Maps listings, and — for UAE clinics — the official health-licence registries), scan each website read-only against 20 technical criteria, and score 0–100 with the weights below. Unmeasured criteria are reported as unmeasured, never guessed. Rankings compare websites on observable technical facts — never the quality of anyone's services.
What we collect, and the lines we don't cross
The target lists come from public business listings and, for UAE clinics, the official health-licence registries (open registry data): name, website, city and sector — nothing else. Duplicates across sources are counted once. No personal data is collected, no emails are harvested, and no outreach results from a scan; our model is inbound only, consistent with UAE and Saudi rules on unsolicited marketing.
The scanner is polite by design: it respects robots.txt, waits five seconds between sites, identifies itself with an explicit user-agent linking to this page, and never submits forms — contact forms are detected and inspected client-side only. Scans run from our own infrastructure outside the Gulf, so response times are comparative, not absolute. A site owner can request exclusion by contacting us.
The 20 criteria and their weights
Scored weight totals 100. Three further signals are reported without weight.
| Criterion | How it's measured | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Performance | Lighthouse 12, mobile profile — performance category | 20 |
| SEO basics | Lighthouse SEO category | 10 |
| Mobile viewport | Viewport meta present | 10 |
| HTTPS | Valid certificate accepted by the standard trust store | 8 |
| Arabic version | Arabic page detected (language, content ratio, hreflang, /ar probe) | 6 |
| Correct RTL | Arabic page declares right-to-left direction | 4 |
| Accessibility | Lighthouse accessibility category | 5 |
| Best practices | Lighthouse best-practices category | 5 |
| Contact form | Form with email/phone/message fields exists | 4 |
| Client-side validation | Required or typed fields on that form | 2 |
| Online booking | Booking or appointment path, incl. Arabic keywords and Gulf booking platforms | 5 |
| Clickable WhatsApp link | 5 | |
| Analytics | GA4 or Google Tag Manager loads on the rendered page | 4 |
| Meta pixel | Meta beacon loads on the rendered page | 2 |
| TikTok pixel | TikTok analytics beacon loads on the rendered page | 2 |
| Structured data | Any JSON-LD block parses | 4 |
| Freshness | Detectable update signal within ~12 months | 4 |
| Response time | Homepage fetch time — reported, not scored | — |
| Maps link | Google Maps link or embed — reported, not scored | — |
| Platform | CMS/framework detection — reported, not scored | — |
Runtime tags (analytics, pixels) are detected from the fully rendered page's network activity, so JavaScript-injected tags count. Weights version: October 2026.
Honesty rules
A criterion that could not be measured scores zero and is listed as unmeasured in the report — we never substitute a guess. Unreachable sites are counted separately from scored sites, and businesses with no usable website (none, or only a social profile) are reported as exactly that statistic.
Named rankings list only the observable technical facts above. They compare websites, not businesses, and never make claims about service quality, prices or care. Any listed business can request a free re-scan or removal.
Frequently asked questions
Because Gulf customers browse on phones, and speed is where most scanned sites fail hardest. Lighthouse's mobile profile is the closest public, reproducible proxy for that first-visit experience.
Point-in-time scans can catch a bad deploy or a temporary slowdown. Request a free re-scan: we re-run the same criteria and the newer result replaces the old one in the next report build.
A social profile can't be audited on these criteria, can't carry structured data, and locks the business's visibility into one platform. It is presence, not a website — and the share of businesses in that position is itself a finding.
Yes, with attribution and the collection date — e.g. 'Black Ads scan of public listings, October 2026'. The methodology page you are reading is the citation.
Run these 20 criteria on your own site
The free audit applies this exact methodology to your website — scored bilingual report within 24 hours.