What it looks like
Latin filler (“Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet”), a heading that still reads “Heading 2”, a button labelled “Button”, a testimonial signed “[Customer name]”, or a services block that promises “Your text here”. It usually sits in the third or fourth section, where whoever published the site stopped scrolling.
Why it gives a page away
Every other tell is a matter of degree. This one is binary: nobody read the page before it went live. That is the whole definition of slop, which is why it is one of the three smoking guns in the rubric. Once a page is in the suspected range, this tell alone lifts it to certified.
How to check your own site
Open every page and scroll to the footer. Then search the page source for “lorem”, “ipsum”, “your text”, “heading”, “placeholder”, “[” and “{{”. Check the browser tab title, the meta description and the image alt texts too; placeholder text survives there longest.
What a designer would do instead
Delete the section rather than fill it with anything. A page with four honest sections beats a page with six where two are empty.
When it is not a tell
A page that says it is under construction, in its own words, with a date. That is a decision. “Coming soon” over a lorem ipsum paragraph is not.
Other tells in copy
- "In today's fast-paced world": An opening line that begins with the state of the world: "In today's fast-paced digital landscape", "In an ever-evolving market", "Now more than ever".
- Elevate, unlock, seamless, empower: Headlines and subheads built from the model's favourite verbs: elevate, unlock, empower, streamline, seamless, effortless, next-level, game-changing.
- Emoji bullets: Lists whose bullets are a rocket, a sparkle, a check mark or a light bulb, usually one per feature, usually the same four.
- No sentence only this business could have written: Read every sentence on the home page. None of them names a place, a person, a year, a price, a real customer or a real limitation.
- Suspiciously round numbers: "10,000+ happy customers", "99.9% satisfaction", "500+ projects delivered", on a company that registered its domain this spring.
- Testimonials from Sarah J.: Quotes from "Sarah J., Marketing Manager" and "Michael T., CEO", with generated portraits, praising the product in the product's own vocabulary.
- The swap-test headline: A headline of the form "Innovative solutions for your business" or "Your reliable partner for X": swap in a competitor's name and nothing changes.