Have there been recent changes to the On-Page Grader tool?

[em_h_uk]

I use this page all the time to grade my primary and secondary keywords and for four years now have consistently managed to achieve A-C grades for all. Today however, I noticed I am flagging F grades for 50% of the keywords.

I do make a note of the initial grades for all pages (as the majority of the keywords I grade using the tool are NOT added/tracked in MOZ 'campaigns'). To make sure I wasn't going mad I went back and graded some keywords I had achieved A-C grades for just 6 days ago. The changes are as follows:

• keyword 1 initially graded an A - 6 days later is still an A
• keyword 2 initially graded C and is now graded as an F
• keyword 3 initially graded C and now an F
• keyword 4 initially a C grade and now an F
• keyword 5 initially a B grade and has remained a B.

Out of interest I then went and added one of the keywords that is now graded an F (but last week was a C) into the 'Add and manage Page Grades' section and graded once again - it's now grading this as a C. I then removed this keyword from my tracked keywords and graded again using the 'On-Page Grader' tool and ... it's back down to an 'F'.

Please could you shed some light on what's going on? I don't want to track each keyword I grade over time but I do want the parameters for grading to remain the same if I use the 'On-Page Grader' tool - what's changed?

I haven't received any alerts about any changes to the tool so if anyone could shed some light on any changes I would appreciate it.

[ErinMcCaul]

Hi there!

My name is Erin, and I'm on the Moz Help Team. Thanks for reaching out! I'm happy to hear you already submitted a ticket! That will be a better place to troubleshoot this issue, and it'll keep your campaign details off the interwebz. We're all about transparency, but we still want to respect your privacy!

I love the keyword format you used in your initial post! If you haven't already done so, it'd be super if you could give us that information in the ticket, with all the applicable keywords filled in.

We looks forward to following up with you via your ticket! Happy Wednesday!

Erin

[em_h_uk]

Many thanks Andrew.

I have just submitted a ticket about this issue as I wonder if you could be right. Will keep you updated.

[AndrewAtMGXCopy]

Ah, I missed your experiment with the "tracked" vs "untracked". That to me sounds more of a bug report/troubleshooting than an algorithm change.

[em_h_uk]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for your response. Currently the following factors are flagged as not being met:

• Broad keyword use in page title

• Exact keyword used in page title

• Keywords in image alt attribute

• Use keywords in your URL

• Keyword is at beginning of page title

• Optimal use of keywords in H1 tags

• Includes a rel canonical tag

Based on my experience of using this tool for 4 years we would generally receive around a 'C' grade for a secondary keyword which has met all criteria apart from that listed above (used 14 times in the body and once in an H2 for a 2000 word page) - which is what we received when grading the page using the On-Page Grader just last week. Since then, no content has changed within the page and when I graded the page again today we received an 'F' grade.

As I mentioned in the original post, I then added this keyword to my campaigns as 'tracked' and graded this keyword again - it then received a 'C' and outlined the exact same factors I listed above as having not been met. When I then deleted the keyword from my 'tracked keywords' again and graded once more, it went back to being an 'F'.

It seems that the On-Page Grader is only really accurately grading tracked keywords, but I'm unsure as to why?

[AndrewAtMGXCopy]

I haven't heard of anything changing in the Moz grader.

Generally the keyword grader gives you an itemized list of reasons for failing. If you click into one of them, what criteria are contributing to your lower grades?