Hard-to-read content: check and improve readability

What it means

The main text on this page scores below 50 on the Flesch Reading Ease scale — the "difficult" band (30–49 is difficult, below 30 is very difficult). The score is driven by long sentences and a high proportion of multi-syllable words, which together make the page hard to scan and understand quickly. It is computed from the page's visible body text, not navigation or boilerplate.

Why it matters

Readability is a user-experience signal rather than a direct ranking factor: text that is hard to read costs you engagement, and engagement patterns feed the quality systems Google uses. Content that a reader has to work through slowly is more likely to be abandoned, which weakens the page's ability to satisfy the query it ranks for. Widening readability without dumbing down the substance generally broadens the audience a page can serve. The Flesch formula is calibrated to English and is an estimate, so it is surfaced as a notice, not an error.

How to fix it

1. Break long, multi-clause sentences into shorter ones; aim for a mix rather than uniformly long lines.
2. Prefer plain, shorter words where a longer one adds no precision.
3. Use lists, subheadings and short paragraphs to break up dense blocks of text.
4. Re-read the page as your actual audience would and cut qualifiers and filler that slow comprehension.

When it's not a problem

Density is often legitimate. Pages written for domain experts — legal, medical, financial, or deep technical documentation — carry a register that is appropriate to simplify only so far, and a low score there is expected, not a defect. The check already exempts pages under 100 words, non-English pages, and technical or legal URL paths; judge any remaining flag against who the page is actually written for.

How common is it?

7742 audited sites in our corpus currently show this issue. The breakdowns below show which platforms, gatekeepers, verticals and countries are most exposed.