What we collect, and what we refuse to.

The short version

We do not track you. This website sets no cookies, the small files that let a site know you next time. It has no advertising pixels or analytics account, hidden tools that report visits to another company. It does no fingerprinting, which is recognizing a device by its settings.

This page loads nothing from anybody else's server, so nothing here can report on you. Every request it makes goes to truemeasurewebdesign.com. The one exception on the whole site is asking for your report by email, covered below.

That is also why there is no cookie banner. There is nothing to consent to.

As a visitor, what we keep about you is what you typed on the inspection page and sent us on purpose. What the census keeps about the websites it reads is further down.

One brief exception. To stop automated programs flooding the inspection, our web host briefly notes your internet address when you start one, so that address cannot start another at once. Each note expires after 8 seconds. We write your address nowhere else; Cloudflare's own records are under Server logs, below.

What happens when you use the free inspection

You give us a website address. Unless the site is on our do-not-measure list (sites we never start a request to), we read its robots.txt, the file where a site tells automated readers what they may read.

If it lets us in, we read the page as its server sends it, grade it, and show you the result.

We never ask your name, and the email boxes on the inspection page are optional.

Afterwards we keep one anonymous line about the measurement so the published benchmark stays honest. It holds the date, the trade, the score, the letter grade, and the names of the checks that failed or came back with a warning. It also holds the town the site lists for itself, if it lists one.

It looks like this: a roofing site in Naples, FL scored 74 and failed these four checks on this day.

There is no way back from that line to you, the person who ran the inspection. It carries no web address, no name, no email, no phone number, no internet address, no browser identifier, and no location of yours.

It does not name the site either. It is anonymous, but not impossible to trace: a trade, a town and a score together could point to the only roofer in a small town.

The one thing that is stored only if you ask for it

In the options, before you run the inspection, there is a checkbox. It starts unticked. Tick it and we keep the address you inspected.

The next time anyone inspects that address, the result shows its last reading beside the new one: the date, the score, the grade and the checks, so you can see what changed. That is a reading of the website, nothing about a person, and it is shown nowhere else.

Changed your mind? Write to us and it comes out.

Where the location in a stored line comes from

From the inspected website itself, never from you. If the site we measured publishes an address in Naples, the line says Naples.

Our host offers us your city with every request, and we refuse it.

If you ask for the report by email

Before you run the inspection there is an optional email field. After the result there is an "Email me this report" form. The result appears on your screen either way.

Use one and your browser sends the message straight to Web3Forms, a form service that passes it to our inbox. Like any server, it also sees your internet address. We cannot speak for what it keeps.

It holds your email address and the report: the address you inspected, the score, grade and check counts, the verdict and the failed checks. It also holds the priority you picked, whether you ticked the Spanish box, your follow-up answer and a link that reruns the inspection.

We use your address to send the report and to answer you. We do not sell it, share it, or add you to a mailing list.

The report form also has a follow-up box, unticked to start. Tick it and a person may check the site again months later and write once if the score moved. One reply ends it.

The census, and the websites we read without being asked

To know whether a finding means anything, we have to know what ordinary business websites look like. So our crawler, the program that reads sites for the census, reads many of them. It keeps our reading of each: the score, the checks that passed, the kind of business, and the town it publishes.

It also keeps whether a business shows a phone number, with a scrambled code for each number. The code is made with a secret key kept only on our census machine. It can be matched against a public register, and without that key it cannot be turned back into the number.

It keeps any license numbers the business prints. Readings taken before this change reached our census still hold the phone number itself.

We also read public lists. Florida's license files show how many licensed businesses some trades have. A license number a website prints can be checked against them. The state's list of companies shows the businesses in Lee County. A business directory points us to their websites.

From each list we keep a business's name, city, county, state and ZIP code, and its license, filing or listing number.

The license files add the license type, the trade, its status and its end date. The list of companies adds the filing type and its status. A directory adds the business's categories, the year it joined and its website.

We keep no phone number or street address from these lists. A business's name can be its owner's own name. We keep it as the list prints it.

If a phone number we keep is a person's rather than the business's, tell us and we take that whole business out of the census for good. We delete its readings, its reports, our copy of its map listing and any directory listing we keep, and the census never asks for its site again.

Even then, copies stay in our backups and logs and in the history of our files. A copy of a directory listing stays only in a backup kept on our own computer. Separately, if someone asked a free inspection to remember that site, we keep its address and its last result.

To improve how we recognize kinds of business, we sometimes keep a copy of a business's front page for one named study, as our crawler received it. A copy holds whatever that page shows, which can include a name or email address the business printed on it. Study copies are kept privately and are never published. Our rule is to delete them when the study ends. Copies from one finished study are still on our computer and are waiting to be deleted.

Apart from those numbers, study copies and the lists above, nothing about a person is stored, and no business is ever named in a published figure. Every figure sums up many sites.

The crawler's first request to a site asks for the robots.txt at the address it was given, and obeys it. To keep your site out entirely, write to hello@truemeasurewebdesign.com with its address. It goes on our do-not-measure list, which the census and the free inspection both check before they connect to a site.

A different site that forwards to yours, or borrows your image, icon or sitemap (its list of pages for search engines), can still send a request your way.

How the crawler behaves, request by request.

Server logs, and the part we do not control

This site is hosted on Cloudflare. Like every web host, their servers record ordinary request information to serve pages and stop attacks. We do not read those logs to profile visitors, and we do not export them.

How long we keep things

Anonymous measurement lines: kept, because the benchmark is built from them and a benchmark you can delete is not evidence of anything.

Census readings: kept, except those of a business taken out at a request.

Emails: kept while we are talking and as long as our records need them. Ask us to delete yours and we will.

A web address you asked us to remember: kept until you tell us otherwise.

What you can ask us to do

Write to hello@truemeasurewebdesign.com and ask what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask for a correction, or ask us to delete it. A real person reads that inbox and answers, usually the same day.

You do not need to cite a law to make us do it.

Children

This inspection is for people who own a business website. It is not aimed at children and we do not knowingly collect anything from them.

When this page changes

It changes on the day the code changes, or the sentence that stopped being true comes out. The date at the top of this page is the day it was last true.