Does SEO_CHARSET_DECLARED affect my score?

Yes. It is an importance 6 rule at SPECIFICATION confidence, so a failure costs 6 × 1 points of impact in the SEO category before that category is normalised to 100.

What does SPECIFICATION confidence mean?

A standard says so: HTML, WCAG, an RFC or Google's own documentation. Confidence is a declared tier rather than a per-rule number, so every rule backed by the same class of evidence carries the same weight - which is what makes the score reproducible instead of hand-tuned.

How do I check SEO_CHARSET_DECLARED on my own site?

Paste your URL into the box above and it runs only this rule, usually in a couple of seconds. It is also included in the SEO checker and in a full scan.

SEOMedium Affects your score

Character encoding declared

SEO_CHARSET_DECLARED

Without a declared charset the browser guesses, and a wrong guess renders non-ASCII content as mojibake.

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How this rule is weighted

Importance: 6 / 10; How much this matters relative to other rules.
Confidence: SPECIFICATION; A standard says so: HTML, WCAG, an RFC or Google's own documentation.
Severity: warning; How the finding is presented when it fails.
Scoring: Counts; A failure costs points in its category.

Impact is importance multiplied by the confidence tier’s weight — SPECIFICATION 1.0, RESEARCH 0.7, EMERGING 0.3, EXPERIMENTAL 0.1. Two rules backed by the same class of evidence therefore always carry the same weight, which is what makes the score reproducible rather than hand-tuned.

Questions about this rule

Does SEO_CHARSET_DECLARED affect my score?: Yes. It is an importance 6 rule at SPECIFICATION confidence, so a failure costs 6 × 1 points of impact in the SEO category before that category is normalised to 100.
What does SPECIFICATION confidence mean?: A standard says so: HTML, WCAG, an RFC or Google's own documentation. Confidence is a declared tier rather than a per-rule number, so every rule backed by the same class of evidence carries the same weight - which is what makes the score reproducible instead of hand-tuned.
How do I check SEO_CHARSET_DECLARED on my own site?: Paste your URL into the box above and it runs only this rule, usually in a couple of seconds. It is also included in the SEO checker and in a full scan.

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