methodology / Privacy & Compliance / #49
Third-party tracker count
#49 · Recommended · Web Quality · weighted · Privacy & Compliance · weight 1.3% · impl implemented · method v1.2.0
Web Quality factor
This factor is part of Web Quality — the weighted 0..100 score that sits above Web Standards. Its weight depends on what kind of site is being measured. Web Standards items take priority; this factor only enters the score once Web Standards passes.
- Base weight
- 0.7 applied to every site type unless overridden below
- Why this weight
- Third-party tracker count — a heavy ad/tracking stack hurts visitors regardless of policy disclosure.
Per-site-type overrides
| Site type | Weight | Δ vs base |
|---|---|---|
| E-commerce | 0.9 | +0.2 |
| News / Publisher | 1.0 | +0.3 |
| Personal site | 0.3 | -0.4 |
| Media / Streaming | 1.0 | +0.3 |
Site types not listed inherit the base weight.
What this means for your business
Every analytics, ad, and chat tool you've added quietly shares your visitors' behavior with another company — and you're legally on the hook for what they do with it. Most small-business sites are running twice as many as the owner realizes.
Plain title: How many outside companies you let watch your visitors
What we measure
Each third-party tracker (analytics, ad pixel, marketing tool) is a vendor with access to your visitors' data. Fewer is better for both privacy and performance.
How to improve your score
Audit which trackers you actually use and remove the rest. Where possible, switch to server-side tagging so visitor data isn't shared with third parties on the client.
Facts
Implementation notes
Detect known tracker domains in the network requests captured by Lighthouse.
Scoring
Scoring formulas are versioned with the methodology. The current method (v1.2.0) maps raw measurements to pass, warn, fail. Factor weights determine how much each contributes to the composite — see the methodology index for the full table.
Version history
| Version | Change | Date |
|---|---|---|
| v1.2.0 | Factor introduced. Status: live. Scoring impl: implemented. | 2026-04-25 |