internationalliving.com website review

About 673 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.

22 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (546 KiB).

Your mobile performance score is 40 (desktop: 62). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, Facebook and Optanon and others), adding 1.2 MB and 1.4 s of main-thread time.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 770 ms of main-thread work and 693 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, 2.4 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Facebook costs a phone 292 ms of main-thread work and 248 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.

16 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 287 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

6 images could be 225 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

Polyfills for old browsers add 33 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 50 ms).

About 22 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page.

Critical files load one after another instead of in parallel (3 chains). Preconnecting to key origins and preloading the hero image shortens the chain.

3 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Your largest element takes 16.0 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “International Living, Discover your Place in the World”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 20.3 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.0 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Visually, the page fills in at 6.9 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The first text or image appears after 3.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 70 ms to 114 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-17, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.7 s to 1.8 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 3.3 MB in 113 requests on a phone: scripts 1.7 MB (51), fonts 792 KiB (8) and images 627 KiB (19). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

1 image (211 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.

1 image further down the page (211 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to it. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 0.92 g of CO₂e: 110.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

2 buttons have no accessible name, so screen readers announce just “button”.

97 elements have a tabindex above 0, which scrambles the keyboard order.

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.

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

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

Headings skip levels (h2 → h5, h2 → h4 and h2 → h5), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Your title is 78 characters, so Google will cut it off around 60: “International Living - #1 Resource for Retiring, Living and Investing Overseas”.

There are 2 <h1> headlines (“Unlock Insider Secrets to Living Well Overseas” and “Fast Track Europe 2027”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

Structured data found (BreadcrumbList, Organization, WebPage and WebSite) but with 1 problem, for example “BreadcrumbList: missing @context (expected "https://schema.org")”.

9 links use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind them.

The homepage links to 150 pages on internationalliving.com and 13 external pages.

There is no https://internationalliving.com/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.

https://internationalliving.com/divorced-jobless-and-50, https://internationalliving.com/i-was-on-the-20th-floor-when-it-hit, https://internationalliving.com/crocodile and https://internationalliving.com/lonely-overseas-not-if-you-follow-the-lamb-stew-rule are marked noindex but linked from your homepage. If they are meant to be found, remove the noindex.

https://internationalliving.com/privacy-policy has no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 61 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

1 image failed to load on a phone, for example https://bat.bing.com/action/0?ti=4049189&Ver=2&mid=136ff467-065d-40a1-ad3a-fb2fb5daae72&bo=1&sid=8054cfd0ccc311f197e7878bf084b5c7&vid=8054e140ccc311f1b6b57bc8f988b2b0&vids=1&msclkid=N&pi=918639831&lg=.

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API that will stop working in future browsers (“Unload event listeners are deprecated and will be removed.”).

Chrome logged issues while loading the page (“Content security policy”).

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

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.

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

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 1,652 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, Meta Pixel and Microsoft Ads and 1 more (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 16 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 25 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.