How does the carbon calculator work?
Please see our ‘How does it work?‘ page for details.
Why does the test fail on my website?
We sometimes have trouble testing a url. This is generally for one of two reasons:
- If your website is very slow, the test may time out.
- If there are routing issues in your DNS settings, it can make it impossible for our test to load the page
Please check your load times and DNS settings before asking us to investigate a failed test.
I use green hosting, but your test says I don’t. Why?
Sometimes we cannot detect green hosting for the following reasons:
- If your hosting provider has not registered the IP address of your server with The Green Web Foundation, we will not be able to detect it. Please check with your hosting provider to see if this is the case.
- If you are using a CDN, then we will not be able to identify the IP address of your main web host and the test will judge the CDN provider as the host.
- Occasionally, we may not be able to obtain results for The Green Web Foundation API, in which case the test will state that the website appears to be using bog standard energy. When this happens, it is only ever temporary so try testing again the next day.
I changed my website but the test results don’t change. Why not?
We cache test results for one day, so if you are making changes to a website and testing each time, you won’t see any difference unless you wait until the next day and test again. This helps minimise the number of requests on the server, which is more sustainable.
Are test results public?
Yes, when you submit a url for testing, it generates a public report with the results.
Can I test private urls?
It depends on how you define private. You can test pages that are blocked from search engines, so long as they can be accessed without a password. Please be cautious testing these as every test will generate a public, search engine indexable results page (see below about deleting such pages).
We cannot test pages protected by a password or on a local server. However, the carbon calculator code is open source so please do feel free to contribute a solution if this is something that you need.
Can you delete my test results?
If you have submitted a test and do not want the results public, then we have a simple policy.
- If you tested a private development url by accident (please don’t do it on purpose) and need to delete the public results page, please get in touch and we will delete the record as soon as we can.
- If you have tested a public url we will not delete the results.
Can I add a badge to my website?
Yes, please find details on our badge page.
Can you conduct a more detailed sustainability audit?
Yes. Website Carbon is a public tool for general testing. If you would like a more in-depth digital sustainability analysis, please get in touch with our team at Wholegrain Digital and we would be happy to discuss your requirements.