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Is this headline doing any work

This scores a headline on five structural checks: character length for where it will appear, word count, whether it opens with something concrete, whether it contains a number, and whether the claim is specific enough to verify. Every failed check returns a rewrite instruction rather than a grade.

Last reviewed 27 August 2026

Leave this blank if the headline is not meant to rank for anything.

Result

Headline score

92 / 100

55 characters, 12 words

The five checks

The five checks
CheckResultPoints
Length for this surface55 chars against 50 to 6025 / 25
Word count12 against a limit of 1215 / 15
Opening word"How" reads as functional12 / 20
Contains a numberYes15 / 15
Claim is checkableYes15 / 15
Free of vague wordingYes10 / 10

What to change

  • It opens on "How", which is functional rather than concrete. That is fine for a how-to, but a version that leads with the specific noun will read harder at the same length.

The target term appears in the first half, which is where a truncated result still shows it. No click-through rate is predicted here, and you should distrust anything that predicts one for you: those figures come from one publisher's own archive and do not transfer to your audience. The checks above are structural, which is the part that does transfer.

How this works

What the numbers mean.

  • 01Length is checked against where the headline will appear. Search results truncate at a pixel width that works out around 55 to 60 characters for most title text, a landing page H1 is read in a single glance so shorter reads harder, and a social hook competes with a feed.
  • 02The opening word check looks at the first word carrying meaning after articles. Abstractions like future, potential, and importance name a category. Concrete nouns name a thing, and a thing is what a reader recognises without effort.
  • 03Specificity is inferred from numbers, currency, percentages, comparison words, and proper nouns. These are the markers that turn an assertion into something a reader can check, which is the difference between a headline and a slogan.
  • 04The score is the sum of six weighted checks. Read the table rather than the total: a headline losing 25 points on length needs a different fix from one losing 25 on vagueness.

Assumptions and limits

  • The weighting is ours, not an industry standard. The individual checks are the output. The total is a summary of them.
  • No click-through rate is predicted or implied. Published headline benchmarks are drawn from one publisher's archive and one audience, and they do not generalise to yours.
  • Word lists cannot judge context. A word that is vague in one headline is precise in another, so read every flag before acting on it.
  • A headline that passes every check can still be dishonest. Nothing here verifies that the piece delivers what the headline promises.

Questions about this tool

How long should a headline be?
It depends entirely on where it appears. For a search result, aim to complete the meaning inside roughly 55 to 60 characters, because that is about where most title text is cut. For a landing page H1 there is no truncation, so the constraint is how much a reader will absorb in one glance, which is less.
Do numbers actually help a headline?
A number sets the scope of a claim before the reader has to decide whether to trust you, which is a structural advantage rather than a psychological trick. It also forces the writer to be specific, because you cannot put a number on a claim you have not measured. We make no prediction about clicks.
Why does this not predict click-through rate?
Because every published headline benchmark comes from one company's own content, measured on one audience, in one format, at one point in time. Applying it to your headline is not analysis, it is borrowing someone else's history. The structural checks here transfer. A predicted percentage does not.
What counts as a vague word?
A word that asserts quality without describing it. Powerful, robust, and comprehensive all tell the reader that something is good without saying what it does. The test is whether you could replace the word with the specific fact behind it, and if you cannot, the fact does not exist yet.

Related

This tool is free and there is nothing to sign up for. If you would rather have the work done than calculate it, that is what Zway does.

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