gencon.com website review

About 2.1 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 11.6 s faster on a phone.

18 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.6 MB).

11 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 4.2 s.

Your mobile performance score is 18 (desktop: 23). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

10 images could be 1.0 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 550 ms faster on a phone.

About 284 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 910 ms faster on a phone.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (YouTube, ZenDesk and Google Maps and others), adding 1.9 MB and 973 ms of main-thread time.

14 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 706 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

YouTube costs a phone 444 ms of main-thread work and 970 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.

A phone's processor spends 3.7 s on main-thread work while loading, 1.6 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

ZenDesk costs a phone 222 ms of main-thread work and 391 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 Maps costs a phone 156 ms of main-thread work and 383 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.

32 KiB JavaScript is shipped twice across bundles. Google estimates it would make the page about 200 ms faster on a phone.

Polyfills for old browsers add 19 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 200 ms faster on a phone.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 100 ms).

35 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.

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.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.45 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

The first text or image appears after 10.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 29.2 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “See You Next Year!”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 29.4 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 11.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The layout shifts by 0.38 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 819 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 0.8 s to 1.1 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 71 ms to 73 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 14.3 MB in 70 requests on a phone: images 10.3 MB (25), scripts 3.4 MB (20) and fonts 259 KiB (2). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

gen-countdown-hi-res.png weighs 790 KiB. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

10 images (1.4 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.

1 image further down the page (790 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to it. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

4 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example large.jpg at 1,200 px wide, shown at 388 px. Resized copies would save about 77 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 4.06 g of CO₂e: 487.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 button has no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

1 frame has no title, so screen-reader users cannot tell what it contains.

Interactive controls must not be nested: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

1 tap target is too small or too close together to hit reliably with a finger.

Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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

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

Headings should not be empty: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

Your title is only 27 characters: “Gen Con | Gen Con Indy 2027”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

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

Your meta description is only 28 characters: “The Best Four Days in Gaming”. 70 to 160 characters is enough to sell the click.

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

No XML sitemap at https://www.gencon.com/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is incomplete here.

The homepage links to 27 pages on gencon.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.

/attractions, /events, /exhibits, /information, /gen-con-indy/your_badge and /gen-con-indy/housing_travel and 9 others use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

/contactus, /attend/futuredates, /gen-con-indy/partner-conventions and /gen-con-indy/sponsors 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.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 18 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

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

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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

1 link go through two or more redirects, for example http://eepurl.com/rioq5.

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.

gencon.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.

gencon.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.

Social proof on the homepage: 2 trust badges. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

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 277 words of visible text.

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

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 and Google Tag Manager (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.

Opening the homepage sets 4 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

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.

Loading the homepage contacts 18 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.