A few longtime readers may recall the time I had this blog’s reading level gauged by a web-based tool. The less-than-flattering result was “Junior High School level.” Less than a year later, that particular website evaluator no longer existed.
Despite that experience, I seem to have retained a masochistic urge to be graded. Spurred on by the example of MaryAnn (a.k.a. The Flick Filosopher — see my blogroll), I rashly submitted this blog to the scrutiny of Hubspot’s Website Grader. Following her lead, I focused on Section I, letter E of the report:
Hey — that means I graduated up a level in only three years! Although… oh yeah, junior high school is only three years. D’oh! Well, at least it didn’t say I’m still in junior high. Being ages 12-13 was plenty traumatic the first time around.
To my distinct non-surprise, the Website Grader Report as a whole is all over the map — enough so to put a considerable dent in its credibility (aw, nuts). It gave me a very high Website Grade of 93, but a very low blog grade of 21. Clicking through to the separate Blog Grader Report, C&B’s blog grade changes into a merely mediocre 61.
The Website and Blog graders disagree in many other places as well. The Website Report says I have too many images on my page,1 which causes it to load slowly. The Blog Grader Report says I have an average of zero images per post, and recommends that I throw some in to liven things up a little.
Most mystifying of all is the Blog Grader Report’s Section V, “Blog Content.” Aside from the zero-images-per-post number, it also wildly miscalculates my average post length (30 words) and average number of links per post (zero). Its only accurate statement is that I don’t post often enough, a piece of data that might better be listed under another section called “No Shit, Sherlock.”
The moral of the story, as I see it: to evaluate the merits of Cheek and Bluster with any insight, it really helps to be a person.
If this is your first visit to C&B you may be wondering, "Who the hell is this guy, and why does he have a blog?" It's a fair question, so I've dedicated an entire page to answering it: check out 
I ran B@B through it, and got a 98 with readability level of college undergraduate. No wonder I’m not succeeding at educating Idiot America. I got a website grade of 98 and blog grade of 96 — not too shabby.