Often the first impression you’ll get of a company is from its website, and an initial opinion can begin to form quite quickly. We noticed that a lot of the signals humans use to make this assessment can be automated, so that’s what we’ve done with our new ‘Auto Analyst’ score.

The Auto Analyst Website Score uses a VentureRadar algorithm to simulate how a human analyst might rate a company from an assessment of its website. Positive signals regarding the activity of the company and quality of the website contribute towards a higher score. If there are doubts about the health of the company the score will be lower.

We think these scores are currently as accurate as a Junior Analyst would produce from spending a few minutes on the company website and answering the question “Does this company seem to be in good health?”

You’ll gradually notice more of these scores appearing on company profiles.

Here’s an example from the company Green Biologics. Notice that the popularity of the website (in the “Website Popularity” section) is actually relatively low, typical of an industrial company, but the Auto Analyst Website Score is high. This means a company can be assessed even if it’s in an industry that typically has low volumes of web traffic.