The "New" pill above your headline gives you away.

What the numbers say

The taste-skill study of 247 sites from One Page Love and Awwwards split them into top-rated and weak (the score comes from a panel of models, not human judges). The pill above a heading, measured on the page, comes out like this:

• Pill above a heading: 5% of top sites, 26% of weak ones. Five times as common on the weak side.
• Pills in general, as judged by the panel: 14% versus 34%.
• Among the failures of the 54 weak sites, the same study counts about 9 that are exactly this hero: centered headline, pill, two buttons and a product screenshot.

Adrian Krebs got there from another direction. When he scored roughly 1,400 Show HN pages for AI design patterns, he asked designers what gives these sites away, and "badge right above the hero H1" made the list, next to "VibeCode Purple" and icon-topped cards.

Why AI always adds one

Because it comes from software landing pages, where it once made sense: announcing a release or a funding round. Models learned that a "serious" hero has one, and they add it even when the site is for a yoga studio.

And because it fills a gap. The headline and subhead are usually generic, and the pill seems to add something concrete without having to come up with a fact. The result is worse: a line that says "New" on a site that launched yesterday.

There's one more twist. taste-skill 2.5, released on November 3, 2026, no longer bans it: its system file allows a pill above the h1 as the hero's only small text. Anti-slop recipes turn into templates too, as I wrote in the post about all-caps labels.

How to check your site

Look at the first screen of your home page. If there's a small rounded element right above the main headline, that's it. In code it usually looks like this:

<div class="inline-flex items-center gap-2 rounded-full border px-3 py-1 text-sm">
  New: Slack integration
</div>
<h1>…</h1>

The Slop Score flags it as "A New pill above the headline", so if your result names it, you know which element it means.

What to do instead

1. No news? Delete it. That's the usual case. The headline moves up and gets read sooner.
2. Real news? Date it. "November 3: export to PDF" says something; "New: export to PDF" stops being true in a month and nobody updates it.
3. Move it out of the hero. Real news fits in a thin bar at the very top, a line of text under the buttons, or a linked changelog.
4. Make it a link. If you announce something, take people to the post or the feature, not nowhere.

If you're asking an AI to build the site, put it in the brief: "no pill or badge above the headline; if there's news, it goes as a dated text link on one line." The prompt guide has the other lines worth banning from the start. Today you can open your home page, look at what sits above the headline and, unless it's dated news, delete it.