interestingengineering.com website review

About 929 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.6 s faster on a phone.

24 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.3 MB).

Your mobile performance score is 38 (desktop: 63). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 4.6 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.9 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

The page has 3,200 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

18 images could be 1.9 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, adthrive.com and Facebook and others), adding 2.0 MB and 1.4 s of main-thread time.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 513 ms of main-thread work and 539 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.

adthrive.com costs a phone 294 ms of main-thread work and 747 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.

About 50 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 300 ms faster on a phone.

7 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 300 ms.

Google/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 136 ms of main-thread work and 337 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 97 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

16 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 219 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Desktop scores 63 but mobile only 38. A gap that wide usually means heavy scripts and images that hit phones hardest.

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.

Your largest element takes 21.3 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Inside BYD's new luxury car powered by solid-state EV batte…”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 29.9 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.5 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 847 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

The first text or image appears after 3.2 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Real visitors wait 232 ms for the page to respond to a tap (75th percentile). Good is under 200 ms.

The layout shifts by 0.102 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 187 ms to 183 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 2.7 s to 2.4 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.2 MB in 226 requests on a phone: scripts 2.4 MB (51), images 2.2 MB (62) and fonts 259 KiB (9). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

6 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example orbital_collisions_beyond_earth.jpg at 1,920 px wide, shown at 138 px. Resized copies would save about 1.4 MB.

6 images further down the page (1.5 MB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.47 g of CO₂e: 176.3 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

29 elements hidden from screen readers can still receive keyboard focus.

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

Document should not have more than one banner landmark: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

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.

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Alternative text of images should not be repeated as text: 2 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

The homepage links to 636 pages on interestingengineering.com and 43 external pages.

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 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, which the crawlers above handle.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 120 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://pixel.rubiconproject.com/token?pid=49096&us_privacy=1YNY.

20 of 47 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

1 third-party cookie is set on load; browsers are restricting these, so whatever relies on them breaks.

5 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 400 ()”.

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

Social proof on the homepage: 7 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 1,497 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Comscore, Criteo, Google Ads and Google Analytics and 7 mores (measured from a US location before any click). A consent tool (HubSpot cookie banner) is installed; check it blocks these until visitors agree where the law requires it.

Opening the homepage sets 31 cookies, 2 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 78 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.