theverge.com website review

About 2.1 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 3.3 s faster on a phone.

120 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.4 MB).

66 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 2.5 s.

A phone's processor spends 20.2 s on main-thread work while loading, 12.5 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

DoubleVerify costs a phone 1.0 s of main-thread work and 346 KiB of downloads while your page loads. That alone is enough to make taps feel slow. Loading it after the page is usable, or only on the pages that need it, takes that off the critical path.

Your mobile performance score is 28. Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

The page has 4,617 HTML elements. Above 1,500, rendering and every interaction get slower on phones.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (DoubleVerify, Google/Doubleclick Ads and Pubmatic and others), adding 2.7 MB and 3.7 s of main-thread time.

Google/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 522 ms of main-thread work and 580 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.

Pubmatic costs a phone 480 ms of main-thread work and 178 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 131 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 350 ms faster on a phone.

Facebook costs a phone 419 ms of main-thread work and 306 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.

Google CDN costs a phone 360 ms of main-thread work and 733 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.

20 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 339 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

4 images could be 72 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

About 19 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page.

14 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

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.

Your largest element takes 16.1 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “Learning to use local AI is exciting, overwhelming, and fru…”.

Visually, the page fills in at 20.8 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

The page becomes fully interactive after 76.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 4.0 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

The first text or image appears after 4.0 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.2 s to 1.6 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 8.4 MB in 1,056 requests on a phone: scripts 6.0 MB (140), other files 842 KiB (492) and images 716 KiB (199). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 2.38 g of CO₂e: 285.0 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

Documents must have <title> element to aid in navigation: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated serious by axe-core.

The page has no <main> landmark, so screen-reader users cannot jump straight to the content.

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

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

1 form field has no label, so screen readers announce an empty box and autofill guesses.

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

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

Your title is only 9 characters: “The Verge”. Between 30 and 65 characters leaves room to say what you do and for whom.

Your meta description is 221 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

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

The homepage links to 168 pages on theverge.com and 87 external pages.

Your robots.txt shuts out 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 https://www.theverge.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 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 138 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

8 images failed to load on a phone, for example https://ids4.ad.gt/api/v1/ip_match?id=AU1D-0100-001791754796-9OTVE4VZ-VNSQ.

54 third-party cookies are 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 “TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'register')”.

Large scripts ship without source maps.

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

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

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.

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 3,058 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Comscore, Google Ads, Google Tag Manager and Meta Pixel 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 16 cookies, 2 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 57 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.