usg.edu website review

40 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (799 KiB).

3 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 1.9 s.

Your mobile performance score is 79. Pages that score under 90 lose visitors before the first paint.

6 images could be 243 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen. Google estimates it would make the page about 450 ms faster on a phone.

About 92 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.

6 third-party services load with your homepage (Google Tag Manager, terminalfour.net and Cloudflare CDN and others), adding 1.3 MB and 204 ms of main-thread time.

About 325 KiB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 186 ms of main-thread work and 315 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.

terminalfour.net costs a phone 12 ms of main-thread work and 625 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.

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

3 long tasks block the main thread while loading, the longest for 129 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

Polyfills for old browsers add 9 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.

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 image “three sample pages of the Georgia Degrees Pay site”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 7.7 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

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

34 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 72 ms to 86 ms at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

3 images further down the page (267 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 0.43 g of CO₂e: 51.5 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

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

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

Elements with visible text labels do not have matching accessible names. (1 element).

No meta description, so Google writes its own snippet from whatever text it finds.

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

There are 12 <h1> headlines (“University System of Georgia”, “UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF GEORGIA” and “CONTACT”). One clear main headline is easier for people and search engines.

No Open Graph image (also missing: og:title, og:description), so links shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook show no preview picture.

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

There is no robots.txt at usg.edu/robots.txt, the first file search crawlers ask for.

No twitter:card tag. X falls back to Open Graph, which is incomplete here.

The homepage links to 157 pages on usg.edu and 68 external pages.

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://usg.edu/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://usg.edu/georgia-degrees-pay/about-usg, https://usg.edu/news/usgfacts, https://usg.edu/regents, https://usg.edu/chancellor, https://usg.edu/divisions and https://usg.edu/divisions/academic-affairs and 9 others have no meta description, so Google writes the search snippet from whatever text it finds.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 85 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

33 of 66 tappable elements near the top of the page are smaller than 24 px, hard to hit with a thumb.

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 403 ()”.

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.

No testimonials, customer logos, ratings or customer counts on the homepage: nothing tells a new visitor that others already trust you.

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.

A local customer looking to call finds no phone number on the homepage. Add one, ideally as a tap-to-call link.

No phone number or email link on the homepage, so ready-to-buy visitors have one fewer way to reach you.

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

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

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 489 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Google Analytics and 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 5 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.