Outhouse audits

Ad Load

These checks measure how much of the page is for sale. Any part of a page that is not for sale is, in effect, being given away.

Ad inventory

Ad slots, labelled listings and ads among results.

• Labelled ads: Listings, results and products that appear where they do because someone paid for them to.
• Ad slots on the page: Rectangles of the page reserved for advertising.
• Ad density: The share of the whole page given over to advertising.
• Recommendation widgets: Grids of Around the web and You may like links at the foot of the content.
• Affiliate links: Outbound links that pay the site a commission when the visitor buys something.

Ad technology

Ad networks, auctions and the scripts that run them.

• Ad networks loaded: Programmatic advertising companies the page calls on to fill its slots.

Marketplace

Fees sellers pay to be seen, and the platform's own products placed beside them.

• Pay-to-rank: Results whose position depends on what the seller pays the platform.
• Self-preferencing: A platform placing its own products ahead of the sellers it hosts.
• Best-price guarantees: Promises that the price is the lowest anywhere, which only a rule on the seller can keep.

Surveillance

These checks measure how well the page knows its visitors. A visitor who is not known cannot be helped, or charged.

Third parties

Companies the visitor has never heard of, who have heard of the visitor.

• Known trackers loaded: Analytics, advertising and data companies the page invites to observe its visitors.
• Third-party domains contacted: Every other company's server the page talks to while it loads.
• Tracks before you agree: Trackers and tracking cookies that start work before the visitor has agreed to anything.

Identification

Fingerprinting, ID syncing and long-lived cookies.

• Browser fingerprinting: Reading the browser's graphics, audio and fonts to recognise a visitor without cookies.
• Identity resolution: Services that match a visitor's identity across sites and companies.
• Long-lived cookies: Cookies set to outlast the visitor's interest in the site.

In-house intelligence

First-party tracking, session recording and beacons to the site's own servers.

• Homegrown tracking: Data the site sends about the visitor to its own servers.
• Session recording and heatmaps: Services that record every mouse movement, scroll and click for replay later.

Annoyance

These checks measure how often the visitor is interrupted. An uninterrupted visitor is a visitor thinking for themselves.

Interruptions

Pop-ups, prompts and overlays that stop the visitor.

• Popups covering content: Overlays that cover most of the screen until the visitor deals with them.
• Cookie or consent banner: A banner asking the visitor to agree to cookies before they can do anything else.
• Push-notification service: A service that asks to send the visitor notifications after they have left.
• Chat widget: A chat window that offers help, then sells something.
• Permission prompts on arrival: Requests for location, notifications or the camera before the visitor has done anything.
• App nagging: Banners and buttons insisting that the visitor would be happier in the app.

Screen and sound

Screen space, sound and processing the page takes for itself.

• Screen covered by fixed elements: Headers, footers, bars and banners that stay on screen wherever the visitor scrolls.
• Autoplaying media: Video or audio that starts before anyone asked for it.
• Layout shifting under you: Content that moves after the visitor has started reading or reaching for a button.
• Script bloat: Script loaded per word of content.

Control

Browser features the page has decided the visitor does not need.

• Hostile controls: Zoom switched off, paste refused, copying blocked and right-click disabled.

Dark Patterns

These checks measure the persuasive design on the page. Visitors are rarely able to decide what is good for them without help.

Pressure

Countdowns, scarcity badges and live activity.

• Urgency, scarcity and social proof: Copy that tells the visitor to be quick because time, stock or other people are running out.
• Confirmshaming: Decline buttons worded to make saying no feel like a personal failing.
• Countdown timers: Timers counting down to the end of an offer.

Choice

Decisions made on the visitor's behalf, to save them the effort.

• No reject button: A consent banner with Accept and nothing like Reject beside it.
• Pre-ticked boxes: Boxes for marketing, partners or extras that are ticked before the visitor arrives.
• Trick questions: Options worded so that ticking the box means the opposite of what it appears to.

Pricing

Prices that reveal themselves gradually, as trust develops.

• Hidden fees and was-prices: Fees that appear late, and was prices that make today's price look like a saving.
• Trial and renewal traps: Trials and introductory offers that turn into payments unless the visitor remembers to stop them.
• Upgrade prompts: Buttons inviting the visitor to pay for features the page used to include.
• Paid plans with ads: Subscription plans that are paid for and still show adverts.

Disclosure

Labels, small print and terms, placed where they are hard to read.

• Hidden ad labels: Ad labels in small or faint type, or readable only by screen readers.
• Fine print: Sentences in type too small or too faint to read.
• Text written for AI agents: Text written for the AI assistants and agents that read the page, usually hidden from the people who visit it.
• Terms by browsing: Notices that treat reading the page as agreement to arbitration, a waiver of class actions and tracking.

Access

Paywalls, sign-in walls and app prompts.

• Paywalls and sign-up walls: Content that stops partway and asks for an account, an email address or a subscription.
• Back-button hijacking: History entries added on arrival so that the back button stays on the page.

Content

Generated text, clickbait and filler.

• AI slop phrasing: Text with the tell-tale phrasing of machine-written filler.
• Clickbait headlines: Headlines that withhold the point in order to be clicked.

Credibility

Claims a page makes about itself, checked against what it does.

• Says one thing, does another: A page that says one thing about itself and was measured doing another.

How the score is calculated

Each audit scores from 0 to 1. Each category score is 75% the average of its two highest audit scores and 25% the weighted average of all its audits, times 100. A shop needs no paywall to score well on Dark Patterns, but a shop with four kinds of dark pattern scores higher than one with two. The raw score is the average of the four category scores.

Weights follow what regulators act on: hidden fees, subscription traps, unlabelled advertising and tracking weigh 3, filler weighs 1.

• Ad Load: Labelled ads 3, Ad slots on the page 2, Ad networks loaded 2, Ad density 3, Recommendation widgets 2, Affiliate links 1, Pay-to-rank 3, Self-preferencing 3, Best-price guarantees 3
• Surveillance: Known trackers loaded 3, Third-party domains contacted 1, Homegrown tracking 3, Session recording and heatmaps 2, Tracks before you agree 3, Browser fingerprinting 3, Identity resolution 2, Long-lived cookies 1
• Annoyance: Popups covering content 3, Cookie or consent banner 2, Push-notification service 1, Chat widget 1, Screen covered by fixed elements 2, Autoplaying media 2, Layout shifting under you 2, Permission prompts on arrival 2, App nagging 1, Script bloat 1, Hostile controls 2
• Dark Patterns: Urgency, scarcity and social proof 2, Confirmshaming 2, Hidden fees and was-prices 3, Trial and renewal traps 3, Paywalls and sign-up walls 2, AI slop phrasing 1, Countdown timers 2, No reject button 3, Pre-ticked boxes 3, Trick questions 2, Hidden ad labels 3, Fine print 2, Text written for AI agents 2, Terms by browsing 3, Back-button hijacking 2, Clickbait headlines 1, Upgrade prompts 1, Paid plans with ads 2, Says one thing, does another 3

Like Lighthouse, Outhouse then judges the raw score on a curve. The curve comes from a crawl of large sites in the same industry: the median site scores 50 and the top 10% score 90 or more. A grade of A puts a page in the top tenth of its industry.

• Shopping: median 60 raw, top 10% 82 raw (15 pages, 2026-10-28)
• News and media: median 67 raw, top 10% 79 raw (20 pages, 2026-10-28)
• Travel and tickets: median 52 raw, top 10% 64 raw (14 pages, 2026-10-28)
• Property and rentals: median 50 raw, top 10% 57 raw (12 pages, 2026-10-28)
• Social and community: median 40 raw, top 10% 64 raw (22 pages, 2026-10-28)
• Everything else: median 53 raw, top 10% 76 raw (83 pages, 2026-10-28)

Grades: A+ from 97, A from 90, B from 80, C from 65, D from 45, F below 45.