gq.com website review

Not measured in this review.

• Real-user TTFB: 864 ms

  864 ms

  Real visitors wait 864 ms for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

• Tap response (INP) held steady for real visitors

  +2%

  Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 188 ms to 194 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

• Largest content (LCP) got 14% slower for real visitors

  +14%

  Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-31, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.4 s to 1.7 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

• Page weight: 9.7 MB

  9.7 MB

  Your homepage downloads 9.7 MB on a phone, 3.4 MB of it images (35%). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

• 1 image over 500 KB

  Rollover-ezgif.com-optimize (1).gif weighs 1,016 KiB. On a phone connection a single image that size takes seconds.

  Elements (1)

• 37 images below the first screen load straight away

  37 images further down the page (2.0 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

  Elements (5)

• 1 image in older formats

  1 image (1,016 KiB) is 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 (1)

• 5 images far larger than shown

  96 KiB

  5 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example GQ-NOV_ONLINE_BOYS_Header.jpg at 390 px wide, shown at 106 px. Resized copies would save about 96 KiB.

  Elements (5)

• About 2.7 g of CO₂ per visit

  2.74 g

  By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 2.74 g of CO₂e: 328.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

• Interactive controls must not be nested (10 elements)

  Interactive controls must not be nested: 10 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

  Elements (3)

• 7 tap targets too small

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

  Elements (3)

• 6 text elements with low contrast

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

  Elements (3)

• Elements must only use permitted ARIA attributes (3 elements)

  Elements must only use permitted ARIA attributes: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

  Elements (3)

• 53 images without alt text

  53 images have no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

  View sourceElements (3)

• All page content should be contained by landmarks (2 elements)

  All page content should be contained by landmarks: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

  Elements (2)

• Landmarks should have a unique role or role/label/title (i.e. accessible name) combination (1 element)

  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.

  Elements (1)

• Page should contain a level-one heading (1 element)

  Page should contain a level-one heading: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

  Elements (1)

• 1 link without text

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

  Elements (1)

• Headings skip levels

  Headings skip levels (h1 → h3 and h3 → h6), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

  View sourceElements (1)

• Title is long (92 characters)

  Your title is 92 characters, so Google will cut it off around 60: “GQ - Men's Fashion, Style, Grooming, Fitness, Entertainment, Lifestyle, News & Politics |…”.

  View source

• No X (Twitter) card tag

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

• 113 internal links, 38 external

  The homepage links to 113 pages on gq.com and 38 external pages.

• robots.txt blocks 4 AI answer engine crawlers

  4 of 6

  Your robots.txt shuts out 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.

• Organization data is thin (3 of 6 facts)

  Your Organization JSON-LD is missing sameAs (social profiles), description and contact details. These are the facts AI assistants use to describe a business and to tell it apart from others with a similar name.

  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 4 crawlers

  robots.txt blocks 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 meta description

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

  Elements (1)

• 1 page without an H1

  /gqsports has no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

• 1 page slow to respond

  /video 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.

• 3 broken images

  3 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://bat.bing.com/action/0?ti=4015762&tm=gtm002&Ver=2&mid=712f8c5f-ea6e-4c11-b362-056e0f87f0e3&bo=1&sid=de1024e0d7e311f1825ce7115a13f516&vid=de106180d7e311f1a05f8376f12e47b1&vids=1&msclkid=N&pi=918.

• 6 JavaScript errors while loading

  6 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “[readmo] Readmo container does not exist!”.

• No HSTS header

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

• 3 links through redirect chains

  3 links go through two or more redirects, for example https://instagram.com/gq/.

• 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

  gq.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

  gq.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 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 1,570 words of copy

  The homepage carries about 1,570 words of visible text.

• Email authentication score: 100/100

  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.

• 12 trackers load before any consent

  12

  Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Comscore, Criteo, Google Ads and Google Tag Manager and 7 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 (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.

• 79 other companies contacted

  Loading the homepage contacts 79 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.