Technical weaknesses
Five signals that knock otherwise-authoritative pages out of first-page contention. Technical weaknesses are earned — the page owner chose not to fix them (or didn't notice) — which means beating them is usually a matter of not making the same mistakes.
SLOW_PS — Slow Page Speed
Fires when: the result's Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) exceeds 3,000 ms.
What it tells you: the page is slow enough that Google's Core Web Vitals ranking factor is applying downward pressure. Users bounce, dwell time drops, rank slips.
Why it's beatable: page speed is one of the most reliably fixable technical signals — any reasonably-modern static or server-rendered page loads under 2s with sensible hosting. If multiple top-10 results are SLOW_PS, the ranking was decided despite this, meaning you can enter at parity on content and win on speed alone.
Note: SERPTool reads LCP from Google PageSpeed Insights when the PAGESPEED_API_KEY env var is configured. Without it, the SLOW_PS signal uses DataForSEO's page-speed estimate which is coarser.
HIGH_SS — High Spam Score
Fires when: the domain's spam score is ≥ 50 on DataForSEO's 0–100 scale.
What it tells you: algorithmic signals of spammy behaviour — excessive link reciprocity, unnatural outbound links, thin boilerplate content, link-farm adjacency. Google usually catches up within an update cycle.
Why it's beatable: the ranking is temporary. A site with HIGH_SS in the top 10 is typically there because of gamed links that Google hasn't deindexed yet. Don't model your content after these pages; treat their slot as available within 3–6 months.
Tactical use: if your top competition is 2+ results with HIGH_SS, plan content now and publish before the inevitable rotation. You'll catch the updraft when those pages drop.
NO_HTTPS — Non-HTTPS
Fires when: the page is served over plain HTTP rather than HTTPS.
What it tells you: the site hasn't migrated to HTTPS. This is rare in 2026 but still happens on older sites, particularly small-business local pages.
Why it's beatable: HTTPS has been a ranking signal for a decade. A NO_HTTPS page ranking is either on pure domain inheritance or in a niche Google hasn't prioritized. Either way, your HTTPS page has a built-in edge.
BROKEN — Broken Page
Fires when: the URL returns a 4xx or 5xx HTTP status.
What it tells you: the page is broken right now. Google's index hasn't caught up — it's still serving the old snapshot — but this result will drop within days of the next crawl.
Why it's beatable: treat as an empty slot. Don't try to "take" this exact ranking; it's going away on its own. Use the signal to understand how unstable the top 10 is: broken pages in the top 10 are a strong indicator of low competitive pressure on the keyword.
OUTDATED_TECH — Outdated Tech
Fires when: SERPTool detects Flash, HTML frames, or similar legacy technology markers on the page.
What it tells you: the site was built in an era before modern rendering and hasn't been updated. Almost always correlated with other content and authority weaknesses.
Why it's beatable: a modern, mobile-friendly, correctly-structured page is almost always better than a frameset-based 2004 site. If Google is still ranking one, the keyword is under-served.
Reading the technical signals together
Three patterns to recognise:
The dying page — BROKEN + OLD_CONTENT + NO_HTTPS. The page is technically dead; it's in the index by accident.
The temporary winner — HIGH_SS on 2+ results. SERP is about to rotate. Publish now.
The slow lane — multiple SLOW_PS without other technical flags. Mostly legit pages just hosted on slow infrastructure. Speed differentiation is a real lever here.
Where SERPTool shows these
- 5 icons in the per-keyword Weaknesses column
- 5 dots per result in the SERP Breakdown
- 5 boolean columns (
SLOW_PS,HIGH_SS,NO_HTTPS,BROKEN,OUTDATED_TECH) in the Full SERP CSV export