By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
How is topical focus scored?
Topical focus is worth 4 of 100 points, 4 of the 15 in the Ranked lever, which asks “Does this read as a source worth trusting?” The engine scores it with these rules:
- 2 points when the page has one H1 and at least 40% of its content words appear in the title.
- 1 point for a meta description between 50 and 160 characters.
- 1 point for a title of at least 15 characters, after stripping a site-name suffix such as “| Brand”.
What does a pass and a fail look like?
| Verdict | Example |
|---|---|
| Pass | Title “How to descale an espresso machine | Brand”, H1 “How to descale an espresso machine”, and a 140-character description of the same task. |
| Fail | Title “Home | Brand”, H1 “Welcome”, and no meta description. Nothing tells an engine which question this page answers. |
How do you fix topical focus?
In the order worth doing it:
- Write the H1 first, as the question or task the page answers.
- Make the title repeat the H1’s main words, then add the brand.
- Write a meta description under 160 characters that answers the H1 in one sentence.
A scan reports the evidence behind the verdict, such as the sections, paragraphs or tokens that failed, and the fix prompt hands the same evidence to a coding agent so it can make the change for you.
Related checks in the Ranked lever
- How does an AI engine decide who wrote a page? — 7 points
- Do AI engines care how old a page is? — 4 points
Frequently asked questions
How long should a meta description be?
Between 50 and 160 characters. Shorter is usually boilerplate; longer is truncated in search results, so the end of it is never read.
Should the title tag and H1 be the same?
They should agree, not necessarily match. The title can add the brand and a qualifier, but the main words of the H1 should be in it so both say the page is about the same thing.