The Pub Health Index: How We Score a Pub's Digital Presence
The Pub Health Index scores a pub out of 100 across seven pillars of digital presence. Every input is public. We do not need the pub's permission, its passwords, or its cooperation, which is the only reason it is possible to score hundreds of pubs consistently. This page is the full methodology. It exists so that anyone who receives a score from us can check how it was calculated, disagree with it, and tell us we got it wrong.Why We Built It
There is no shortage of advice telling publicans their online presence matters. There was nothing telling a particular publican how their particular pub was doing, in a number they could compare to anything. "Your social media could be better" is not actionable. "You score 38 out of 100, the average across 884 pubs is 53, and your weakest pillar is Engagement at 2 out of 15" is a place to start. So we built a scoring system, applied it to 884 pubs across 23 UK brewery estates, and published the results. The index is the measuring stick. The 80/20 Report is what it found.The Seven Pillars
Six pillars are scored out of 15. Content Quality is scored out of 10. The total is 100. Review Reputation (out of 15). The average star rating across the platforms where the pub appears: Google, TripAdvisor, Restaurant Guru, Booking.com. Ratings on a 10 point scale are normalised to 5 before averaging. A pub consistently above 4.5 scores near the top. Below 4.0 scores poorly. Review Volume and Recency (out of 15). How many reviews exist and how recent they are. Both matter, and recency matters more than most landlords expect. A pub with 800 reviews and nothing in the last six months is telling a worse story than a pub with 200 reviews and a steady trickle. Social Presence (out of 15). Which platforms the pub is actually on and whether the profiles are complete: Google Business Profile, Facebook, Instagram, others where relevant. This measures whether the digital footprint exists at all. Social Engagement (out of 15). Posting frequency, and whether anyone responds. Likes and comments measured against follower count, so a 400 follower pub with an active local audience is not punished for being smaller than a 4,000 follower pub nobody interacts with. Website and Discoverability (out of 15). Whether the pub has a website, whether it loads, whether it says the things a customer needs (opening hours, menu, how to book), and whether it can be found by searching. Digital Responsiveness (out of 15). Whether the pub replies. To reviews, good and bad, and to messages. It averages 6.1 out of 15 across the 884 pubs, and it is among the cheapest pillars to improve, because replying costs nothing but attention. Content Quality (out of 10). Photography, and whether there is any story being told. Scored out of 10 rather than 15 because it is the most subjective of the seven, and we would rather it carried less weight than pretend we can measure it as precisely as a review count.The Bands
| Band | Score | Label | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | 80-100 | Thriving | Strong across all seven pillars. Optimisation, not repair. |
| B | 60-79 | Stable | A decent foundation with clear gaps. |
| C | 40-59 | At Risk | Real gaps. Present online but not working. |
| D | 20-39 | Critical | Minimal presence. Effectively invisible to a new customer. |
| F | 0-19 | Invisible | No meaningful digital footprint. |
What the Index Found
Across 884 pubs in 23 independent brewery estates, scored between March and April 2026: The average was 53 out of 100. The median was 56. The highest scoring pub in the entire dataset scored 76, and the lowest scored 19. Not one pub reached Band A. Seven reached Band B, all of them in a single estate. 824 pubs, which is 93.2% of the sample, landed in Band C. A further 53 were Band D or F. The distribution is the finding. This is not a sector with strong performers and weak performers. It is a sector where almost everyone is in the same middle band, which means the bar for standing out locally is far lower than most publicans assume. The clearest pattern is between pillars rather than between pubs. Social Presence averaged 9.40 out of 15, and 80.9% of pubs had a social profile of some kind. Social Engagement averaged 3 out of 15. Pubs have set the accounts up. They are not posting to them.What the Index Does Not Measure
Stating this plainly, because a score that claims to measure more than it does is worse than no score. It does not measure whether the pub is any good. A superb pub with no website scores badly. A mediocre pub with a slick Instagram scores well. The index measures digital presence, not beer, food, welcome or atmosphere. It does not measure trade. We have no access to takings. A high score does not prove a pub is busy, and a low score does not prove it is empty. Plenty of pubs are full every night on word of mouth alone. It does not account for deliberate choices. A tenanted pub with brewery-run marketing may score low because the brewery holds the accounts. A pub that has decided social media is not for them scores the same as one that forgot. Content Quality is a judgement. Photography and storytelling are assessed by a person looking at the accounts. Two assessors would not always give the same mark. That is why it is capped at 10.Sampling, and Where the Numbers Are Softer
Scoring is capped at 50 pubs per estate. For most of the 23 estates that is the whole estate. For the largest it is not: Robinsons operates roughly 250 pubs and we scored 50 of them. Shepherd Neame operates roughly 320 and we scored 50. So for the biggest estates the score is a representative sample, not a census, and the estate average carries more uncertainty than one drawn from a small estate scored end to end. We would rather say that than imply a completeness we have not earned. Where an estate was sampled, the estate report marks it. Scores are also a snapshot. A pub that starts posting in May does not get a better March score. We re-audit rather than continuously track.Score Your Own Pub
The full index requires looking at four review platforms, the social accounts, and the website for every pub, which is why we run it as a service rather than a form. There is a simplified version you can run yourself in about twenty minutes. It covers six of the seven pillars for a maximum of 90 rather than 100, and it will put you in the right band even if it will not give you the exact number. It is free and there is nothing to sign up for: the pub social media audit checklist. If you would rather see the scores of real pubs before scoring your own, all 23 estate reports are published in full, with every pub named and ranked: the estate reports.Corrections
If you run one of the pubs we have scored and think the score is wrong, tell us. The most common reason is that we missed an account, usually because it is under a slightly different name than the pub trades as. That is a genuine error on our part and we will re-score it. Email [email protected] with the pub name and what we got wrong.Further reading:
- The 80/20 Report: the full findings from all 884 pubs
- Band C: The Mediocre Middle: why almost every pub lands in the same band
- The Pub Social Media Audit Checklist: score your own pub in twenty minutes
- Estate Digital Health Benchmarks: how the 23 estates compare
Tom Fairhall is the founder of Pub Post Pro. The Pub Health Index was applied to 884 pubs across 23 independent UK brewery estates between March and April 2026, using publicly available data only. Estates larger than 50 pubs were sampled at 50.