msnbc.com website review

152 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (3.9 MB).

About 3.5 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 9.9 s faster on a phone.

27 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.4 s.

A phone's processor spends 12.4 s on main-thread work while loading, 5.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Your mobile performance score is 26. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (Taboola, Amplitude Mobile Analytics and Google CDN and others), adding 3.5 MB and 1.7 s of main-thread time.

About 199 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 600 ms faster on a phone.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 738 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

7 images could be 181 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 500 ms faster on a phone.

Taboola costs a phone 567 ms of main-thread work and 1.1 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.

Polyfills for old browsers add 169 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 500 ms faster on a phone.

Amplitude Mobile Analytics costs a phone 327 ms of main-thread work and 738 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.

44 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Google CDN costs a phone 240 ms of main-thread work and 734 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.

The page has 2,568 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

Web fonts hide text while they load. Setting font-display: swap shows text immediately (about 150 ms).

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.

2 KiB could be saved by minifying CSS.

The first text or image appears after 8.3 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 25.4 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Donald Trump, seen from shoulders to forehead, looks to the…”.

Visually, the page fills in at 15.7 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 53.3 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 2.4 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' tap response (inp) went from 119 ms to 169 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.6 s to 1.6 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 19.5 MB in 366 requests on a phone: media 7.7 MB (2), scripts 6.1 MB (119) and images 4.1 MB (77). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 5.54 g of CO₂e: 664.7 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 element use ARIA attributes their role does not allow, which confuses screen readers.

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

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

Elements use prohibited ARIA attributes (4 elements).

2 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.

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).

Structured data found (BreadcrumbList, NewsMediaOrganization, WebPage and WebSite) but with 1 problem, for example “WebPage: keywords is an empty list”.

The homepage links to 266 pages on msnbc.com and 17 external pages.

Your robots.txt shuts out ChatGPT search (OAI-SearchBot), ChatGPT (ChatGPT-User), Claude (Claude-User) and Perplexity (PerplexityBot). These fetch pages to answer people's questions and cite the source, so your site can't be quoted or linked in those answers.

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.

https://www.ms.now/live, https://www.ms.now/morning-joe, https://www.ms.now/opinion, https://www.ms.now/community-live-qa, https://www.ms.now/community-discussion and https://www.ms.now/deadline-white-house and 3 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

Your homepage links to 1 page by a URL that isn't its canonical one, for example https://www.ms.now/news/the-signs-for-el-sayed-in-detroit-and-the-lack-of-them-are-setting-off-alarm-bells, whose canonical is https://www.ms.now/news/news-analysis/the-signs-for-el-sayed-in-detroit-and-the-lack-of-them-are-setting-off-alarm-bells. Linking straight to the canonical URL saves crawlers a detour and keeps ranking signals on one address.

https://www.ms.now/live, https://www.ms.now/elections and https://www.ms.now/opinion have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 127 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

10 of 31 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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

The page uses 2 deprecated browser APIs that will stop working in future browsers (“Unload event listeners are deprecated and will be removed.”).

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

1 image is displayed at the wrong aspect ratio, so it looks stretched or squashed.

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

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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.

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 1,777 words of visible text.

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

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Amplitude, Comscore, Criteo and Google Ads 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 39 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 75 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.