huffpost.com website review

About 2.3 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 8.0 s faster on a phone.

177 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (904 KiB).

A phone's processor spends 11.5 s on main-thread work while loading, 5.9 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

3 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.1 s.

Your mobile performance score is 34. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (thecontentserver.com, Rubicon Project and Other Google APIs/SDKs and others), adding 10.0 MB and 2.4 s of main-thread time.

thecontentserver.com costs a phone 643 ms of main-thread work and 7.6 MB 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.

Rubicon Project costs a phone 548 ms of main-thread work and 328 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.

Other Google APIs/SDKs costs a phone 307 ms of main-thread work and 1,016 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.

2 images could be 81 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 309 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

The page has 2,513 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

Connatix costs a phone 191 ms of main-thread work and 412 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/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 188 ms of main-thread work and 329 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 37 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

About 34 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page.

17 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

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.

The first text or image appears after 10.7 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 32.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Donald Trump”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 64.2 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 13.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 908 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.9 s to 2.3 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Real visitors see the first content after 2.2 s (75th percentile). Good is under 1.8 s.

1 image 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' tap response (inp) went from 129 ms to 136 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 13.5 MB in 1,197 requests on a phone: media 7.2 MB (3), scripts 3.7 MB (106) and HTML 1.1 MB (124). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 3.82 g of CO₂e: 458.9 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”.

Images must have alternative text: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated critical by axe-core.

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

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

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

<svg> elements with an img or image role must have alternative text: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

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

22 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. (1 element).

No XML sitemap at https://www.huffpost.com/static-assets/isolated/huffpostsitemapgeneratorjob-prod-public/us/sitemaps/sitemap-v1.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

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

The homepage links to 284 pages on huffpost.com and 17 external pages.

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.

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.

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.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 153 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

3 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://amplify-imp.outbrain.com/pixel?p=OPn7uJhI1fv3lWuRZ9h1kZMt7m2mBJx8VyitZ_QAyRGbiHFeZ0fkGxNnHV4Z6vncaxNKTLiWLC7vwOi8sC-LRgArKm6EAqI3qPOfW9EtwDBaz_l_1oFaldVkR10w__Bh8h4iYKjeguol8GewrLLMu2Pysx77UsU.

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

8 of 33 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“The Topics API is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.”).

4 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: net::ERR_EMPTY_RESPONSE”.

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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

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

X-XSS-Protection is set to “1; mode=block”; the header is deprecated and can introduce bugs. Use 0 or remove it.

huffpost.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.

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 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.

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 1,363 words of visible text.

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 Amazon Ads, Comscore, Criteo, Google Ads and Outbrain and 3 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 13 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 147 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.