researchsquare.com website review

7 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.5 s.

Your mobile performance score is 43. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

24 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (849 KiB).

About 1.0 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.

3 images could be 665 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

6 third-party services load with your homepage (snipcart.com, Cloudflare CDN and Google Tag Manager and others), adding 928 KiB and 529 ms of main-thread time.

About 84 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 450 ms faster on a phone.

snipcart.com costs a phone 193 ms of main-thread work and 413 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.

Cloudflare CDN costs a phone 185 ms of main-thread work and 299 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 2.0 s on main-thread work while loading, 976 ms of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Polyfills for old browsers add 74 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 200 ms faster on a phone.

8 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 248 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

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

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.

For real visitors the layout shifts by 0.30 (75th percentile). Good is under 0.1.

The page becomes fully interactive after 16.6 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

The layout shifts by 0.497 while loading, so content jumps under the reader's thumb. Good is under 0.1.

Your largest element takes 4.5 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the text “Share early. Improve your manuscript. Make an impact. SUBMI…”.

Real visitors wait 1.0 s for your server to start answering (75th percentile). Good is under 800 ms.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 547 ms in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

The first text or image appears after 2.6 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 4.4 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

21 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 135 ms to 133 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 1.8 s to 1.7 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

3 images are downloaded at several times the size a phone draws them, for example f80b57c1127a8148a8c40df3.jpg at 1,920 px wide, shown at 100 px. Resized copies would save about 656 KiB.

Your homepage downloads 3.0 MB in 100 requests on a phone: scripts 1.8 MB (48), images 881 KiB (22) and fonts 133 KiB (3). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

4 images further down the page (720 KiB) 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 0.85 g of CO₂e: 101.9 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

All page content should be contained by landmarks: 15 elements on the page fail this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Document should not have more than one contentinfo 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.

Headings should not be empty: 5 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

Headings skip levels (h1 → h3 and h2 → h6), which makes the page harder to scan with a screen reader.

Your title is only 22 characters: “Home | Research Square”. 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.

There are 3 <h1> headlines (“Share early.”, “Improve your manuscript.” and “Make an impact.”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

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

The homepage links to 45 pages on researchsquare.com and 12 external pages.

Your robots.txt shuts out ChatGPT (ChatGPT-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.

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.

The HTML your server sends has 241 of the 488 words a browser shows. AI crawlers don't run JavaScript, so they miss the rest.

There is no https://www.researchsquare.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.

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.researchsquare.com/researchers/editing and https://www.researchsquare.com/researchers all use the title “Professional Editing | Research Square”. Search engines can't tell which page to show for a search, so each competes with the others.

https://www.researchsquare.com/browse, https://www.researchsquare.com/journals, https://www.researchsquare.com/researchers/promotion, https://www.researchsquare.com/researchers/preprints, https://www.researchsquare.com/researchers/in-review and https://www.researchsquare.com/legal/editorial and 5 others use the same meta description. A description written for each page earns more clicks.

https://www.researchsquare.com/submit and https://www.researchsquare.com/request-api have no <h1> headline, so visitors and search engines get no clear main topic.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 16 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

2 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/null?maxDims=215x1200.

1 error was logged to the browser console while the page loaded, for example “Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 401 ()”.

Large scripts ship without source maps.

On a phone, there is no call to action on the first screen: visitors have to scroll to find out what to do next.

Social proof on the homepage: 1 testimonial or review block. 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 488 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Tag Manager (measured from a US location before any click). No consent tool was detected. Visitors from the EU, UK and several US states must be asked first.

Opening the homepage sets 2 cookies (measured from a US location before any click).

No known cookie consent tool loads with the page. Some sites build their own banner, and some only show one to visitors from the EU.

Loading the homepage contacts 7 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.