Website launch checklist

Enter your website and we check 23 things that a launched site should have: HTTPS redirects, a real 404 page, share images, robots.txt, a sitemap, llms.txt and more. It takes about 10 seconds. No account needed.

Your website

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SearchMaxx ships one change a day to your website to get you named in Google and AI answers. A person checks every change.

Email Roshan

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What we check

Loads and redirects

• Homepage loads over HTTPS. Browsers mark plain HTTP pages as not secure, and every other check depends on the page loading.
• HTTP redirects to HTTPS. Old links and typed addresses still use http://. They should land on the secure page.
• www and the bare domain lead to one site. Two copies of the same site split links and confuse search engines about which one to show.
• Missing pages return a 404 status. If a made-up URL returns 200, search engines can index endless error pages. This is common on single-page apps.
• Homepage responds quickly. Slow first responses delay everything else. Crawlers also fetch fewer pages from slow sites.

Search basics

• Title tag. The title is the blue link in Google and the name AI answers use for the page.
• Meta description. Search engines often show it under the title. Without one, they pick a sentence for you.
• Canonical tag points to the page itself. It tells search engines which URL to show when the same page is reachable at several addresses.
• Homepage can be indexed. A leftover noindex from a staging site keeps the whole homepage out of search.
• One main heading (h1). The h1 tells readers, screen readers and crawlers what the page is about.
• Language is declared. The lang attribute helps screen readers pronounce the page and search engines match it to readers.
• Mobile viewport tag. Without it, phones show a shrunken desktop page. Google indexes the mobile version of sites.
• robots.txt exists and allows search. Crawlers read it first. A missing file is fine for them, but a Disallow: / left from staging blocks everything.
• Sitemap exists and is listed in robots.txt. A sitemap lists your pages so crawlers find new ones quickly.
• Structured data (JSON-LD). It names your company, product and pages in a format search engines and AI tools read directly.

Sharing

• Open Graph title and description. Slack, LinkedIn, iMessage and others use them for the preview when someone shares your link.
• Share image loads. Links with an image get noticed. A broken image URL shows a blank preview.
• X (Twitter) card tag. X needs twitter:card to show a large image preview instead of a small one.
• Favicon. It shows in browser tabs, bookmarks and next to your result in Google.

AI search

• llms.txt. A short Markdown summary of your site, with links, for coding tools and AI agents. A proposed convention from llmstxt.org. Google Search ignores it.
• llms-full.txt. The full text of your key pages in one Markdown file. Optional, and newer than llms.txt.

Trust

• Privacy policy link. Buyers, app stores and ad platforms look for one. It is a basic sign of a real company.
• Contact or about link. People and AI tools both look for who runs a site before they recommend it.

How the check works

We fetch your homepage from our server like a crawler would, without running JavaScript, then request robots.txt, your sitemap, llms.txt, llms-full.txt, your share image, your favicon, the http:// and www versions of your domain, and one made-up URL. Each request stops after 8 seconds and the whole check after 20. We identify ourselves as "SearchMaxx launch checklist" in the user agent. We do not store your results.

Does passing every check mean my site will rank?

No. These are the basics that stop a site from being found, shared or read correctly. Ranking and being named in AI answers depend on what your pages say and who links to them. That is the work SearchMaxx does every day.

Can AI crawlers read my site?

This checklist covers launch basics. The free AI site check tests whether ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity's crawlers are allowed in and get the same page as people.

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