Are your sentences hard to follow?
It finds substantial pages whose usable sentences are long on average.
What Check Engine measures
The test needs a supported prose language and a page intended for search with at least 200 words. It uses recorded sentence lengths when available. Otherwise it splits the prose into sentences and keeps those longer than 2 words. At least 5 usable sentences are needed. An average greater than 25 words produces a finding. Exactly 25 words per sentence stays within the limit. For example, an average of exactly 25 words per sentence stays within the limit.
Only pages with enough prose and usable sentences enter the calculation. It does not assign a school reading age or analyse the meaning of technical terms.
How to read the result
The finding is low severity and reports the pages with dense sentence structure. An average can hide both short and long sentences, so use it to choose passages for review rather than treating every sentence on a reported page as a fault.
Why it matters
Long sentences can ask a reader to hold several ideas at once. The code measures their length as a review cue, while a human still decides which ideas belong together and which terms the intended reader needs.
How to fix it
Read the affected paragraphs and put the main point early. Split a sentence when it joins separate ideas, and replace vague phrases with concrete words. Keep a longer sentence when its structure is clear. Review the edited passage for meaning before checking whether the average changed.
What we found in field audits
Problems in Content quality were found on 14 of the 14 sites we audited. These are area totals. Read the field-audit method.
Method note
backend/seo_engine/checks/content.py, readability, revision 0bb8e8d3.
Common questions
Is an average of 25 words per sentence too long for this check?
No. Exactly 25 words per sentence passes the length comparison. Only a higher average reaches the finding.
How much text is needed for the sentence-readability sample?
A page needs at least 200 words and enough usable sentences. Unsupported prose is left out.
Does a readability finding mean every sentence needs shortening?
No. It is a low severity result based on an average. Read individual passages to find where the structure becomes hard to follow.