Some embodiments promote website credibility and the optimization of websites for people by automatedly quantifying various elements of a website into component credibility scores. In some embodiments, a set of encoded credibility scoring rules are used to compute each of the component credibility scores, wherein the credibility scoring rules are derived based on factors that have been identified by a grouping of people that preferably represent a primary demographic of users that consume the content of a particular classified type of website. In some such embodiments, the credibility scoring rules are derived from commonality that is identified from a sample set of known credible and/or non-credible websites of a particular classification. Once the credibility scoring rules are defined, the system applies the rules to other websites having the same classification as those from which the rules are derived to automatically generate credibility scores for the other websites.