webmd.com website review

About 1.3 MB of JavaScript is downloaded but never used on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 5.2 s faster on a phone.

144 files are served with short cache lifetimes, so returning visitors download them again (1.0 MB).

A phone's processor spends 10.4 s on main-thread work while loading, 5.8 s of it running JavaScript. Above 2 s, taps and scrolls feel sluggish.

Your mobile performance score is 29 (desktop: 59). Under 50 is Google's “poor” band: many phone visitors leave before the page is usable.

8 third-party services load with your homepage (DoubleVerify, Google/Doubleclick Ads and Google CDN and others), adding 3.7 MB and 3.1 s of main-thread time.

Google/Doubleclick Ads costs a phone 756 ms of main-thread work and 869 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.

DoubleVerify costs a phone 773 ms of main-thread work and 449 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 420 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.

Google Tag Manager costs a phone 347 ms of main-thread work and 331 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 360 ms. During a long task the page ignores taps.

wbmdstatic.com costs a phone 209 ms of main-thread work and 973 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.

4 files block the first paint until they finish downloading. Deferring or inlining them could save about 300 ms.

24 images could be 250 KiB smaller with modern formats (WebP or AVIF) and sizes that fit a phone screen.

Polyfills for old browsers add 100 KiB JavaScript that modern phones do not need. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

About 93 KiB of CSS is downloaded but never applied on this page. Google estimates it would make the page about 150 ms faster on a phone.

13 KiB could be saved by minifying JavaScript.

Desktop scores 59 but mobile only 29. A gap that wide usually means heavy scripts and images that hit phones hardest.

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.

The first text or image appears after 8.4 s on a phone. Good is under 1.8 s.

Your largest element takes 19.1 s to render on a phone. Google's threshold for “good” is 2.5 s. The largest element is the image “photo of female patient talking with doctor”.

The page becomes fully interactive after 44.1 s. Good is under 3.8 s.

Visually, the page fills in at 10.7 s (Speed Index). Good is under 3.4 s.

Scripts block taps and scrolling for 1.8 s in total while the page loads. Good is under 200 ms.

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

Over the last 25 four-week periods to 2026-10-03, real Chrome visitors' largest content (lcp) went from 1.9 s to 1.9 s at the 75th percentile (Chrome UX Report (opens in a new tab) history).

Your homepage downloads 5.6 MB in 909 requests on a phone: scripts 3.6 MB (113), other files 794 KiB (430) and images 693 KiB (253). Under 2 MB keeps phones on slow connections fast.

1 image is downloaded at several times the size a phone draws it, for example moh-logo.png at 857 px wide, shown at 111 px. Resized copies would save about 252 KiB.

4 images further down the page (369 KiB) download before anyone scrolls to them. Adding loading="lazy" lets the first screen load first.

1 image (297 KiB) is 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.

By the Sustainable Web Design model, a visit to your homepage emits about 1.58 g of CO₂e: 189.3 kg a year at 10,000 visits a month. It scales with page weight, so every byte cut lowers it.

3 elements use ARIA attributes their role does not allow, which confuses screen readers.

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

Interactive controls must not be nested: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated serious by axe-core.

1 element has a tabindex above 0, which scrambles the keyboard order.

6 images have no alt text, which hurts accessibility and image search.

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

Heading levels should only increase by one: 1 element on the page fails this check, rated moderate by axe-core.

Contentinfo landmark should not be contained in another landmark: 1 element on the page fails 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.

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

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

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

ARIA role should be appropriate for the element: 3 elements on the page fail this check, rated minor by axe-core.

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

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

Your meta description is 279 characters; Google truncates after about 160, so the end of your pitch is cut.

No XML sitemap at https://www.webmd.com/sitemap.xml, so Google discovers your pages only by following links.

3 links have no real href, so search engines can't follow them.

1 link use generic text like “click here” or “learn more”, which tells Google nothing about the page behind it.

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

The homepage links to 177 pages on webmd.com and 35 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 /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 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, which the crawlers above handle.

We fetched 15 pages linked from your homepage (of 129 found) and read each the way a search engine does.

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

The page uses 1 deprecated browser API 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_SOCKET_NOT_CONNECTED”.

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

Social proof on the homepage: 1 trust badge. Pairing it with named testimonials or customer logos makes it far more convincing.

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 969 words of visible text.

Before a visitor clicks anything, the page loads Amazon Ads, Google Ads and Google Tag Manager (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 32 cookies, 1 of them by other companies (measured from a US location before any click).

Loading the homepage contacts 58 hosts run by other companies (fonts, scripts, analytics, ads), each of which sees the visitor's IP address.