Charset Declaration Test

What is it?

This test will check if the webpage has a character encoding declaration ("charset"). If the server doesn't specify a character encoding format when it sends an HTML file, the browser may display some characters incorrectly to users. Google recommends using the Unicode/UTF-8 character set when possible.

Pass rate:

Top 100 websites: 100%
All websites: 98%

Pass rates of Top 100 US websites
2021	100%
2022	98%
2023	100%

100

How do I fix it ?

In order to pass this test you have to add a proper character encoding declaration to your webpage. Google recommends using the Unicode/UTF-8 character set when possible. You can do it by using one of the following methods:

Add a meta charset element in your webpage. The element must be fully contained within the first 1024 bytes. The best practice is to add this tag as the first element in the head section of your document.
```
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    …
```

Add a meta element with an http-equiv attribute:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
    …

Configure your server to add a Content-Type header that includes a charset directive.
```
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
```

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