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Meta charset checker
An undeclared charset lets the browser guess — and wrong guesses turn accented text into mojibake.
Part of the Technical SEO audit & onpage SEO audit group — also included in the free full scan.
Checks this exact page only — it does not crawl the rest of your domain.
One free scan · anonymous preview · sign in to save the full report
Character encoding declared (utf-8)Static example for Meta charset checker; run the check above for your own result.What it checks
See whether your text renders as written instead of mojibake.
Meta charset (or content-type charset) presence and value.
Reads the no-JS response only, never runs JS. One fetch shared with the full scan.
What good looks like
Good looks like an explicit charset declared before text renders — browser guesses turn accented text into mojibake. Missing fails; a non-HTML response is na.
How to fix it
Add <meta charset="utf-8"> as the first element inside <head>.
What the full scan adds
- All 34 checks in one pass — one URL, every category, a single report.
- Evidence on every row: the values found, why it fails, the fix, and a deep link per check.
- Your score against the global distribution — see where you stand.
- Sign in and the report is kept for 1 year; anonymous reports expire after 7 days.
Official source: MDN, meta element · Rule: meta-charset v1 · checker library
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Frequently asked questions
Is the Meta charset checker free?
Yes — one free run without an account, with an anonymous preview. Sign in to save the full report and keep the evidence.
How often should I run it?
After every deploy that touches routing, templates or the checked file — and after each Google core update, to confirm nothing regressed.
Does the check run JavaScript?
No — it reads the no-JS response only, exactly what a crawler or AI agent sees when it fetches the URL.
How is this different from a full audit?
This page runs one check with its full criteria and fix notes. The free full scan runs every category at once and keeps the evidence per URL — use it once you know which checks matter.