About NewsGrade

NewsGrade grades news websites the way outside systems — search engines, AI, and everyday readers — actually experience them. Not how a site looks to the person who built it, logged in, on a good monitor. How it looks to everyone else.

It checks over 70 criteria across 11 categories — including search visibility, structured data, trust and credibility signals, and how well a site is set up for AI systems to read it correctly. That includes whether a site has a properly configured Google News Sitemap, which directly affects visibility in Google News and Discover. Every scan produces a plain-language report with prioritized recommendations, built for editors and publishers, not developers.

Every report also includes a free advisory check of your Terms of Service for clauses that claim broad rights over content readers submit — such as comments or photos. This is separate from the 70+ scored criteria and doesn’t affect your grade; it’s there so your newsroom can spot a rights grab worth reviewing.

NewsGrade was built independently by Yoni Greenbaum, a product strategist with nearly 30 years of newsroom experience. It’s a personal project, built on personal time, and isn’t affiliated with or endorsed by any employer.

Have a question, found a bug, or want to talk about what NewsGrade could do next? See Contact.