The short list for 2026: Google PageSpeed Insights for speed and Core Web Vitals, Chrome DevTools for mobile and responsive checks, a crawler like Screaming Frog for broken links, Google’s Rich Results Test for structured data, and ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode for the newest test of all, whether AI answers actually name your business. Every one of those is free at the level a small business needs. If someone is selling you a testing suite before you have run those five checks, you are buying the wrong thing first.
This post used to be a bare list of four links. Some of those links now point at tools that are dead or unmaintained. That is how fast a tools list rots.
How do you test website speed and Core Web Vitals?
Use Google PageSpeed Insights. Paste in a URL and you get a report on both mobile and desktop. Free, no account, and the closest thing to a standard because it reports the same metrics Google itself uses.
Two things on that report matter, and people mix them up. Lab data is a simulated load run right now. Field data is what real Chrome users experienced on your site over the past 28 days, and it only appears if you get enough traffic. Field data reflects reality. Lab data tells you what to fix.
The Core Web Vitals themselves are three numbers: Largest Contentful Paint (how long until the main content appears), Interaction to Next Paint (how fast the page responds to a tap or click), and Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the page jumps around while loading). Google labels each one good, needs improvement, or poor.
When to use it: after any redesign, after adding a plugin or tracking script, and once a quarter otherwise. Test your top two or three pages, not just the homepage.
The engine behind that report, Lighthouse, is also built into Chrome DevTools. Same audit engine, run locally on your own machine, which is how you test a staging site or a page behind a login.
A score is not the goal. Fixing the two things dragging the score down is the goal. Chasing 100 is a hobby, not a business decision.
What is the best way to test a website on mobile?
Use Chrome’s built-in device mode. Right-click the page, choose Inspect, then click the small device icon at the top left of DevTools. You get phone and tablet presets plus a drag handle for any width you want.
The dedicated responsive-preview sites everyone used to bookmark have largely died off or gone stale. Responsinator, which the old version of this post recommended, was not reachable when we checked. Browser tooling is the reliable path because it ships with the browser and gets updated with it.
Device mode will not tell you how the site feels in your hand, so do both. Drag the width to catch layout breaks, then use your phone to tap the number, fill the form, find your hours.
How do you find broken links on your website?
Run a crawler. Screaming Frog SEO Spider is a long-standing option in this industry. It is a desktop app that walks your site the way a search engine would, and the free version crawls up to 500 URLs, plenty for a typical small-business site.
One pass gives you broken internal and external links, missing or duplicate title tags, redirect chains, and images with no alt text. That is a to-do list you can hand to whoever maintains the site.
When to use it: once a quarter, and always right after a migration or a big content cleanup. Broken links are the most common thing we find on sites nobody has audited in a year.
Want the whole checklist run for you?
Our free AI Readiness Audit runs the technical checks plus the AI visibility test, then hands you a score and a ranked list of what to fix first.
How do you check that your structured data works?
Structured data is the machine-readable label spelling out your business name, address, hours, services, and reviews. Adding it is one job. Confirming it parses is another, and it is the one people skip. Two free checkers, and you want both:
- Google’s Rich Results Test tells you whether Google can read your markup and whether it qualifies for a rich result. That is the Google-specific view.
- The Schema.org validator checks against the general schema.org vocabulary, so it catches valid schema Google happens not to display. Useful, because AI engines are not limited to what Google shows.
Both accept a live URL or a pasted snippet. Test one page of each type you publish.
How do you test whether AI can find your business?
This check did not exist the last time this post was written, and it now belongs next to the speed test. There is no polished dashboard at the small-business level, so you run it by hand.
Open ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Mode. In each one, ask the question a customer would ask, not the one you wish they would ask: “best plumber in Gilbert AZ,” not your company name. Then write down whether you were named, who was named instead, and whether anything said about you was wrong.
Keep it in a sheet with the date. The point is the trend across quarters, not any single answer, since these engines are not deterministic.
Why this matters as much as a speed test: a site can pass every other check here and still be absent from AI answers. Fast, mobile-friendly, clean links, valid schema, never mentioned. Different problem, different fix. If that sounds like you, here are the signs your website is invisible to AI search.
What is the 15-minute quarterly website test?
Put it on the calendar four times a year and work straight down the list. None of it costs money.
- Speed (3 min). PageSpeed Insights on your top two or three pages, mobile view. Note anything in the poor range.
- Mobile (3 min). On your actual phone, complete one real task: tap to call, submit the form, find your hours.
- Links (4 min). Run the crawler, sort by response code, fix every 404 and redirect chain.
- Schema (2 min). Rich Results Test on one page of each type. Confirm no errors.
- AI visibility (3 min). Ask your top customer question in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Mode. Log whether you were named.
Do you need paid website testing tools?
Almost certainly not. Every tool named above has a free tier that covers a typical small-business site. Google Search Console is free too and worth connecting, since it reports Core Web Vitals and indexing problems on your real pages automatically.
Paid tools earn their keep when you run many sites or need scheduled monitoring. That is an agency problem, not an owner problem. One site, the free stack, fifteen minutes a quarter, and you are ahead of most of the sites we get called in to audit, because nobody had been running these checks at all.
Frequently asked questions
What is the best free website testing tool?
Google PageSpeed Insights, if you only run one. It is free, needs no account, and reports a simulated lab test on mobile and desktop, plus real-user field data when your site gets enough traffic for it. It will not tell you about broken links or whether AI answers mention you, so pair it with a crawler and a manual AI check.
How often should I test my website?
Once a quarter for the full pass, and immediately after any redesign, migration, or new plugin. Fifteen minutes four times a year catches almost everything that matters on a small-business site.
My site passes every speed and technical test. Why is it still not showing up?
Technical health and AI visibility are different problems. Speed, mobile layout, and clean links keep you from being penalized. Getting named in an AI answer depends on whether engines can tell what you do and where, whether your pages answer the question being asked, and whether other sources confirm you are trusted.
Passing the tests is the floor, not the finish.
Chase Kaizen runs the technical checks and the AI visibility test together, then fixes what is costing you customers. Start with the free audit: a 0 to 100 score and what to fix first.
