Does your site mix too many visual styles?
It counts typefaces and groups nearly identical colours from readable styles.
What Check Engine measures
The sample needs at least 3 readable pages with font or colour data. Pages left unread because of a stylesheet cap are removed. Too few remaining pages stops the comparison. More than 4 font families produces a low-severity finding. Groups of very similar colours also produce a low finding. Each colour must be within 10.0 RGB distance units and 0.01 opacity units of every other colour in its group. RGB distance is the straight-line distance between the colour channel values. Opacity is measured as a fraction of full opacity. For example, exactly 4 font families stay within the font-count limit.
The check counts styles it could read on pages and stylesheets from the same site. When a large enough site has no readable style data, it reports that limit. It leaves the palette unknown.
How to read the result
Typeface counts and colour groups are clues for a design review. It does not render screenshots, measure contrast or establish that every close colour pair is accidental. A purposeful colour or font difference can be valid.
Why it matters
Small differences in style values can be hard to spot by eye while still leaving separate declarations to maintain. The report gives you concrete values to inspect instead of claiming that a count alone proves poor design.
How to fix it
Compare the listed families and colour groups with your intended styles. Remove unused families and consolidate values that were meant to be identical. Keep deliberate differences such as opacity states. Inspect a representative page after editing the shared stylesheet so that a numerical cleanup does not remove a useful visual distinction.
Brand consistency: the question no crawler asks
What we found in field audits
Problems in Brand consistency were found on 13 of the 14 sites we audited. These are area totals. Read the field-audit method.
Method note
backend/seo_engine/checks/brand.py, visual_consistency, revision 0bb8e8d3.
Common questions
How many font families trigger the visual-style finding?
More than 4 font families triggers a low result. The count needs review against the site's intended design.
Can unread stylesheets make the site look free of style differences?
A stylesheet cap can leave pages unread and exclude them from the sample. Insufficient readable styles can stop the comparison.
Does the visual-style check measure colour contrast?
No. It groups colours and counts fonts; it does not measure contrast. Screenshots are outside its scope.