Why 70 is the line
Rubric draws the line at 70 because, across its calibration set, pages scoring 70 and above were quoted far more often than pages just below. At or above 70 a page is treated as quotable and shown in cream. Below 70 it is below the line, shown in red, and engines tend to answer around it rather than name it.
- →70 is the line. At or above it a page is treated as quotable; below it, shown in red, it tends to be answered around rather than named.
- →Red in Rubric only ever means one thing: below the line. It is not a severity rating.
- →Your site score is the median of your page scores, so clearing 70 on your typical page matters more than a high score on your best one.
Why is the line drawn at 70?
Seventy is a calibrated threshold, not a round number picked because it looks tidy. Across Rubric's calibration set, pages scoring 70 and above were quoted far more often by AI engines than pages just below, so 70 is where the estimate crosses from "answered around" to "quotable". Below the line, the return on your work is steep: a page climbing from 55 to 72 crosses into being quotable, and that is a bigger practical win than any move you could make higher up. The line marks the point where a page becomes a candidate an engine is willing to name.
What does red mean in Rubric?
Red means below the line. That is the only thing it means, and it means it everywhere: on a page score, on a pillar score and on the site number. At or above 70 is drawn in cream; below 70 is drawn in red. Rubric deliberately keeps a single meaning for the colour so you never have to decode it. Red is not a severity grade and it does not flag an error in your setup. It marks a page that an engine is more likely to answer around than to quote by name, and that is the whole message.
How does the 70 line relate to your median site score?
Your site score is the median of your page scores, and 70 is the line each page is measured against. The two work together. If your site score is 64, half your pages sit below 64 and most of your site is below the line. Raising the site score is therefore the same job as getting your typical page over 70: you lift the middle of the pack rather than polishing the one page that already scores 90. Because the site number is a median and not an average, one excellent page cannot pull it over the line while a long tail of weak pages stays red.
Why not just push every page to 100?
Above 70 the returns flatten. Once a page is treated as quotable, extra points add little to its odds of being cited, so the effort is better spent on pages still below the line. The practical rule is simple: move red pages over 70 before you optimise pages that already clear it. A site with every page at 72 is in far better shape than a site with a handful of pages at 95 and the rest at 60, because AI engines answer questions from whichever page is ready, not from your best page.
Does the 70 line move for different site types?
No. Website-type profiles re-weight the same 44 checks for a given site type, so an ecommerce category page and a blog post can score the same signal differently. That re-weighting is a layer applied underneath the calibrated 0 to 100 score, not a separate scale. The line stays at 70 for every site type. Whichever profile applies, 70 still means the page has crossed into being quotable, and red still means it has not.