Keyword stuffing signals: Crawl Audit check 189

Short answer: repeating the same phrase over and over to rank for it makes a page tiring to read and breaks Google's spam policies. Check 189 warns when a single word makes up more than 3.5% of your main content.

What Crawl Audit checks

• It ignores common words (the, and, of) and needs at least 50 words.
• Warning: the most frequent word is over 3.5% of all words. The report names it.
• Pass: otherwise.

The 3.5% line is Crawl Audit's. Google publishes no keyword density figure, and a page about one product will naturally repeat its name.

What Google says

• "Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings in Google Search results."
• Its examples include "Blocks of text that list cities and regions that a web page is trying to rank for" and "Repeating the same words or phrases so often that it sounds unnatural."
• "Excessively repeating the same words over and over (even in variations) is tiring for users".

If it warns

• Read the page aloud. If the word sticks out, use "it", "they" or a synonym.
• Remove lists of towns or keyword strings in footers and sidebars.
• If the word is simply your product name on its own page, the warning is safe to ignore.

On devmarde.com

The most frequent word on our homepage on 6 October was "run", at 18 of 2,942 words (0.6%). It passes.

Sources

• Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search (updated 28 August 2026) and SEO Starter Guide, checked 6 October 2026.