amtrak.com website review

139 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (9.5 MB).

About 4.7 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 8.3 s faster on a phone.

13 images could be 7.8 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.1 s faster on a phone.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 6.4 s of main-thread work and 5.0 MB of downloads while your page loads. That alone is enough to make taps feel slow. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

12 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 5.4 s.

A phone's processor spends 30.1 s on main-thread work while loading, 20.6 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

About 738 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.9 s faster on a phone.

301 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Your mobile performance score is 3 (desktop: 22). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and nextit.com and others), adding 7.4 MB and 8.6 s of main-thread time.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 4.6 s. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Facebook costs a phone 480 ms of main-thread work and 276 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Google CDN costs a phone 385 ms of main-thread work and 733 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

nextit.com costs a phone 410 ms of main-thread work and 442 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Dynatrace costs a phone 406 ms of main-thread work and 141 KiB of downloads while your page loads. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

The page has 1,938 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

Polyfills for old browsers add 69 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 150 ms).

6 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

Scripts make the browser recalculate the layout repeatedly while the page loads, which wastes processor time on phones.

Real Chrome users on phones do not pass Google's Core Web Vitals on this page (28-day field data from the Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab)). Google uses this in ranking.

Real visitors wait 1.1 s for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.32 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

Your largest element takes 30.2 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Book Flex Fares & Travel With Ease Fully refundable and no …”.

Visually, the page fills in at 21.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 13.1 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

The page becomes fully interactive after 106.5 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 6.5 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

The layout shifts by 0.562 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 555 ms to 736 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

2 images have no width and height attributes, so the layout jumps as each one loads.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 2.0 s to 2.1 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 21.2 MB in 455 requests on a phone: scripts 10.8 MB (146), images 8.6 MB (107) and other files 919 KiB (175). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

3 images weigh 2.3 MB together. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

7 images (3.0 MB) are JPEG, PNG or GIF. The same pictures as WebP or AVIF are usually much smaller at the same quality, and every current browser shows them.

2 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example original at 2,000 px wide, shown at 328 px. Resized copies would save about 360 KiB.

2 images further down the page (545 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 6.01 g of CO₂e: 720.6 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

5 elements use ARIA attributes their role does not allow, which confuses screen readers.

Certain ARIA roles must contain particular children: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated critical by axe-core.

ARIA attributes must conform to valid values: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

5 text elements don't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

Interactive controls must not be nested: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

1 image has no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Heading levels should only increase by one: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

2 visible links have no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where they go.

1 form field has no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (2 elements).

No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

5 links use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind them.

1 link has no real href, so search engines can't follow it.

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is set, so this is minor.

The homepage links to 101 pages on amtrak.com and 16 external pages.

There is no Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

There is no /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your key pages for AI tools (llmstxt.org). It is optional and few AI tools read it yet, so treat it as a cheap extra.

/plan-your-trip is marked noindex but linked from your homepage. If it is meant to be found, remove the noindex.

/plan-your-trip has no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 82 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

3 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://ib.adnxs.com/px?consent=1&id=1578347&t=1.

14 of 38 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

10 third-party cookies are set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“Unload event listeners are deprecated and will be removed.”).

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “require is not defined”.

Large scripts ship without source maps.

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Cookie”).

X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff is missing, so browsers may guess file types.

Opening https://amtrak.com goes through 2 redirects before the homepage loads.

No Referrer-Policy header, so full URLs can leak to the sites you link to.

No Permissions-Policy header to switch off camera, microphone and location for embedded content.

There is no /.well-known/security.txt telling researchers how to report a security problem to you.

amtrak.com has no CAA record, so any certificate authority may issue a certificate for it. A CAA record naming your provider (for example letsencrypt.org) closes that door.

amtrak.com's DNS answers are not signed. DNSSEC stops attackers forging them to send visitors or email elsewhere; most registrars switch it on in a click, though most sites still run without it.

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

No analytics or tag manager detected in the HTML, so you can't measure whether any of these fixes work.

Your longest form asks for 8 fields (0 required). Every extra field lowers completion.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

No guarantee or risk reducer (money-back, free trial, no credit card) is mentioned, which is often what tips a hesitant visitor.

The homepage carries about 479 words of visible text.

DMARC is set to p=none, so mail pretending to be amtrak.com is still delivered. Add a report address, check the reports, then move to quarantine.

Email authentication: SPF record 25 points, plus 15 when it ends in -all (10 for ~all); DMARC record 25, plus 25 for a reject policy (15 for quarantine); a DKIM key on a common selector 10.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, LinkedIn Insight and Meta Pixel and 6 mores (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (OneTrust) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 41 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 53 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.