cnbc.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 CLS: 0.14

  0.14

  For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.14 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

• Real-user TTFB: 827 ms

  827 ms

  Real visitors wait 827 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

• Tap response (INP) held steady for real visitors

  +7%

  Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 181 ms to 194 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

• Largest content (LCP) got 10% slower for real visitors

  +10%

  Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.5 s to 1.7 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

• Page weight: 3.5 MB

  3.5 MB

  Your homepage downloads 3.5 MB on a phone, 90 KiB of it images (2%). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

• 1 image below the first screen load straight away

  1 image further down the page (21 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to it. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

  Elements (1)

• About 1.0 g of CO₂ per visit

  1.01 g

  By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.01 g of CO₂e: 120.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

• ARIA attributes must conform to valid values (1 element)

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

  Elements (1)

• 15 text elements with low contrast

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

  Elements (3)

• 2 tap targets too small

  2 tap targets are too small or too close together to hit reliably with a finger.

  Elements (2)

• All page content should be contained by landmarks (3 elements)

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

  Elements (3)

• Heading levels should only increase by one (1 element)

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

  Elements (1)

• Banner landmark should not be contained in another landmark (1 element)

  Banner landmark should not be contained in another landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

  Elements (1)

• 9 links without text

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

  Elements (3)

• 1 form field without a label

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

• No H1 headline

  There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

• 108 internal links, 1 external

  The homepage links to 108 pages on cnbc.com and 1 external page.

• robots.txt blocks 4 AI answer engine crawlers

  4 of 6

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

• Most text only appears after JavaScript runs

  18%

  A phone browser shows 1,224 words, but the HTML your server sends has only 220. GPTBot, ClaudeBot and PerplexityBot read that HTML without running JavaScript, so they see an almost empty page. Server-side rendering or pre-rendering fixes it.

• 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

• 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 page without a title

  /markets has no <title>, so Google invents the link text in results.

  Elements (1)

• 1 page without a meta description

  /markets has no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

  Elements (1)

• 7 links to non-canonical URLs

  Your homepage links to 7 pages by a URL that isn't their canonical one, for example /pre-markets, whose canonical is /markets/pre-markets. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

  Elements (7)

• 7 pages without an H1

  /markets, /business, /economy, /finance, /health-and-science and /media and 1 other have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

• 6 pages with very little text

  /business, /economy, /finance, /health-and-science, /media and /real-estate 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.

• 1 page slow to respond

  /cryptocurrency took over 3 s to send its HTML from our server.

• 15 internal pages checked

  We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 87 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

• 32 small tap targets

  32 of 60 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 “Error: <svg> attribute width: Expected length, "auto".”.

• No HSTS header

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

• No X-Content-Type-Options

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

• 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 CAA record

  cnbc.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

  cnbc.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 social proof

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

• No analytics detected

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

• 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.

• No form on the homepage

  There is no form on the homepage, so every lead has to click through to another page first.

• 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.

• About 1,224 words of copy

  The homepage carries about 1,224 words of visible text.

• Urgency cues

  The page uses urgency cues (a countdown or limited-time wording).

• Email authentication score: 95/100

  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.

• 7 trackers load before any consent

  7

  Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Amplitude, Comscore, Google Ads and Google Tag Manager and 2 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.

• 23 cookies set on arrival

  23

  Opening the homepage sets 23 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

• 35 other companies contacted

  Loading the homepage contacts 35 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.