asahi.com website review

Not measured in this review.

• Fails Core Web Vitals for real visitors

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

• Real-user INP: 205 ms

  205 ms

  Real visitors wait 205 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

• Largest content (LCP) held steady for real visitors

  +2%

  Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.7 s to 1.7 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

• Page weight: 4.6 MB

  4.6 MB

  Your homepage downloads 4.6 MB on a phone, 697 KiB of it images (15%). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

• 2 images far larger than shown

  88 KiB

  2 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example maxresdefault.jpg at 1,280 px wide, shown at 358 px. Resized copies would save about 88 KiB.

  Elements (2)

• 5 images in older formats

  5 images (350 KiB) 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.

  Elements (5)

• 6 images below the first screen load straight away

  6 images further down the page (222 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

  Elements (5)

• About 1.3 g of CO₂ per visit

  1.31 g

  By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.31 g of CO₂e: 157.4 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

• 7 text elements with low contrast

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

  Elements (3)

• All page content should be contained by landmarks (147 elements)

  All page content should be contained by landmarks: 147 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

  Elements (3)

• 86 form fields without a label

  86 form fields have no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

  View source

• No main landmark

  The page has no <main> landmark, so screen-reader users cannot jump straight to the content.

  Elements (1)

• 1 link without text

  1 visible link has no text or label, so screen readers cannot say where it goes.

  Elements (3)

• Headings should not be empty (2 elements)

  Headings should not be empty: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

  Elements (2)

• Headings skip levels

  Headings skip levels (h2 → h4, h2 → h4 and h2 → h4), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

  View sourceElements (3)

• Title is short (18 characters)

  Your title is only 18 characters: “朝日新聞：朝日新聞社のニュースサイト”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

  View source

• Meta description is short (69 characters)

  Your meta description is only 69 characters: “朝日新聞社のニュースサイトです。政治、経済、社会、国際、スポーツ、文化、科学などの速報ニュースに加え、教育、医療、環境などの話題や写真も。”. 70 to 160 characters is enough to sell the click.

  View source

• One H1 headline

  Your <h1> is empty.

  View source

• 701 internal links, 87 external

  The homepage links to 701 pages on asahi.com and 87 external pages.

• robots.txt blocks 6 AI answer engine crawlers

  6 of 6

  Your robots.txt shuts out ChatGPT search (OAI-SearchBot), ChatGPT (ChatGPT-User), Claude search (Claude-SearchBot), Claude (Claude-User), Perplexity (PerplexityBot) and Perplexity (Perplexity-User). These fetch pages to answer people's questions and cite the source, so your site can't be quoted or linked in those answers.

• No Organization structured data

  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.

  View source

• No llms.txt

  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.

• Opted out of AI training for 5 crawlers

  robots.txt blocks GPTBot, ClaudeBot, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended and CCBot, which collect pages to train models. That's a legitimate choice and doesn't by itself stop the site appearing in AI answers.

• 1 linked page is broken

  Your homepage links to /shimen/20261102/index_tokyo_list.html, which answers with an error. Visitors hit a dead end and search engines drop it.

  Elements (1)

• 1 page without a meta description

  /pickup-news-summary/back-number has no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

  Elements (1)

• 2 links to non-canonical URLs

  Your homepage links to 2 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example /shimen, whose canonical is /shimen/20261102. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

  Elements (2)

• 5 pages with very little text

  /shimen/index_ev.html, /whatsnew/ranking, /video, /special/podcasts and /reporter-bio have under 150 words in the HTML. Thin pages rarely rank; if the text loads with JavaScript, crawlers that don't run it see even less.

• 5 pages slow to respond

  /pickup-news-summary/back-number, /special, /video, /special/podcasts and /reporter-bio took over 3 s to send their HTML from our server.

• 15 internal pages checked

  We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 189 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

• 69 small tap targets

  69 of 102 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

• 4 JavaScript errors while loading

  4 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Uncaught TypeError: Cannot assign to read only property 'open' of object '[object Window]'”.

• 1 broken link to your own pages

  1 link from your homepage to your own site is broken, for example http://www.asahi.com/shimen/20261102/index_tokyo_list.html (404).

• No HSTS header

  No Strict-Transport-Security header, so browsers may still try plain http first on a return visit.

• No Content-Security-Policy

  No Content-Security-Policy header, the main browser-side defence against injected scripts.

• No clickjacking protection

  Neither X-Frame-Options nor a CSP frame-ancestors policy is set, so any site can embed yours in a frame.

• No X-Content-Type-Options

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

• 4 links through redirect chains

  4 links go through two or more redirects, for example https://digital.asahi.com/rd/lgck2.html?iref=pc_gnavi.

• No Referrer-Policy

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

• No Permissions-Policy

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

• No security.txt

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

• No CAA record

  asahi.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.

• DNSSEC is off

  asahi.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 call to action on the first screen

  On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

• No calls to action

  We found no call-to-action buttons or links (such as “Book a demo” or “Get a quote”) anywhere on the homepage.

• No social proof

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

• No direct contact details

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

• Only about 165 words

  The homepage has only about 165 words of visible text; thin pages give Google and first-time buyers little to go on.

• No risk reducer

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

• DMARC is monitor-only (p=none)

  DMARC is set to p=none, so mail pretending to be asahi.com is still delivered. Reports are on, so moving to quarantine is the next step.

• Email authentication score: 70/100

  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.

• 11 trackers load before any consent

  11

  Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Criteo, Google Ads, Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager and 6 mores (measured from a US location before any click). No consent tool was detected. Visitors from the EU, UK and several US states must be asked first.

• 42 cookies set on arrival

  42

  Opening the homepage sets 42 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

• No consent tool detected

  No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

• 94 other companies contacted

  Loading the homepage contacts 94 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.