planning.org website review

70 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.8 MB).

3 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 3.8 s.

19 images could be 1.0 MB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.9 s faster on a phone.

About 1.5 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 1.5 s faster on a phone.

About 463 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 2.5 s faster on a phone.

Your mobile performance score is 35 (desktop: 48). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

A phone's processor spends 4.2 s on main-thread work while loading, 2.1 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (YouTube, Google Tag Manager and Facebook and others), adding 3.0 MB and 1.7 s of main-thread time.

YouTube costs a phone 989 ms of main-thread work and 1.9 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.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 271 ms of main-thread work and 341 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 244 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

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

28 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Polyfills for old browsers add 12 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need.

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 13.5 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image.

The page becomes fully interactive after 30.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The first text or image appears after 6.1 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 9.3 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.17 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

The layout shifts by 0.218 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 429 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

19 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' tap response (inp) went from 100 ms to 102 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-24, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 2.3 s to 2.1 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.2 MB in 150 requests on a phone: scripts 2.9 MB (54), images 1.3 MB (38) and stylesheets 574 KiB (6). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

17 images (1.2 MB) are 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.

15 images further down the page (998 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

3 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example af03e175-6ea6-4955-b047-4d07ab151215zoning-reform-homepage-m at 1,244 px wide, shown at 390 px. Resized copies would save about 97 KiB.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.47 g of CO₂e: 176.0 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

1 text element doesn't have enough contrast against the background to read easily, especially outdoors on a phone.

1 image has no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

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

1 form field has 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.

Your robots.txt disallows the whole site for every crawler, so search engines are told to stay out.

There is no <h1>, so neither visitors nor Google get a clear main headline.

Your title is only 29 characters: “American Planning Association”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

No structured data (JSON-LD), so Google can't show rich results such as your logo, ratings or FAQs.

No canonical URL, so duplicate versions of the homepage (with or without www, with tracking parameters) can split ranking signals.

No XML sitemap at https://planning.org/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

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

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

The homepage links to 333 pages on planning.org and 5 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 Organization (or LocalBusiness) JSON-LD, so search engines and AI assistants have no machine-readable facts about who runs the site: its name, logo, profiles and contact details.

There is no https://planning.org/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 150 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

19 of 36 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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

3 errors were logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Access to XMLHttpRequest at 'https://data.stbuttons.click/data' from origin 'https://planning.org' has been blocked by …”.

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

Your homepage shows a street address but no LocalBusiness JSON-LD, so Google and AI assistants have to guess your address, hours and phone from the page text.

The homepage shows no opening hours. If customers visit or call, show when.

Your phone number appears as text but isn't a tel: link, so phone visitors can't tap to call.

There is no link to Google or Apple Maps. A directions link is one tap for a phone visitor.

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 499 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Ads, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot and LinkedIn Insight and 1 more (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 11 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 42 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.