SEO report for www.theguardian.com

Real-world speed Google PageSpeed

Loading Core Web Vitals from Google… this can take up to 30 seconds.

Authority & backlinks

Looking up which websites link to theguardian.com…

Indexing & crawling 88%

Can search engines reach, read and index this page?

• ✓

  Status codecritical

  The page returned HTTP 200.

• ✓

  Indexablecritical

  No noindex instruction – the page can appear in search.

• ✓

  robots.txthigh

  robots.txt found.

  Googlebot is allowed to crawl this page.

• ✓

  XML sitemaphigh

  Sitemap found at https://www.theguardian.com/sitemaps/news.xml with 371 URLs.

  Declared in robots.txt.

  This page is NOT listed in it.

  Most recent lastmod: 2026-11-01T13:22:01Z.

• !

  Canonical URLhigh

  Canonical: https://www.theguardian.com

  Points to a DIFFERENT address – Google will probably index that one instead of this page.

  Fix: Add <link rel="canonical" href="(this page's full URL)"> – only point it elsewhere for true duplicates.

  Read the guide: duplicate content

• !

  Redirectshigh

  2 redirects before the page loaded – a chain slows visitors and wastes crawl budget.

  https://theguardian.com/ → https://www.theguardian.com/ → https://www.theguardian.com/us

  Fix: Link straight to the final address and make each redirect go to its destination in one hop.

  Read the guide: broken links and redirects

• ✓

  www / non-wwwmedium

  theguardian.com redirects to www.theguardian.com.

Search snippet & sharing 83%

How the page looks in Google results and when shared.

• ✓

  Title tagcritical

  “Latest news, sport and opinion from the Guardian”

  About 438px of Google's ~580px desktop width.

• ✓

  Meta descriptionhigh

  128 characters, ~793px of ~990px.

  Good length.

  Google sometimes rewrites descriptions to match the search; a good one is still used most often.

• ✗

  Open Graph & social cardsmedium

  Open Graph title or image missing.

  No twitter:card tag.

  Fix: Add og:title, og:description, og:image (1200×630 PNG/JPG, absolute URL) and twitter:card=summary_large_image.

  Make the tags with the free Open Graph generator

  Read the guide: does social media help SEO?

• ✓

  Faviconlow

  Favicon linked (Google shows it next to results).

• ✓

  Languagelow

  lang="en"

Content quality 47%

Is there enough clear, useful text that matches what the page targets?

• ✓

  Word countmedium

  1,200 words of main content (inside <main>).

  Google has no minimum word count – this is a rough guide to whether the page answers the question in full.

• !

  Readabilitymedium

  Flesch reading ease 49 (fairly difficult), about 17 words per sentence.

  Fix: Use shorter sentences and everyday words – aim for a score of 50+ for customer-facing pages.

  Read the guide: how to write SEO content

• ✓

  Topic focushigh

  5 of 5 title keywords appear in the main content.

• ✗

  H1 headingcritical

  No H1 heading.

  Fix: Use one H1 that states the page topic with its main keyword.

• !

  Heading structuremedium

  76 headings for 1200 words – a lot for the amount of text.

  Levels are in order.

  Fix: Use H2s for main sections and H3s inside them, without skipping levels.

  Read the guide: the on-page SEO checklist

• ✗

  Text-to-code ratiolow

  1% of the HTML is visible text.

  Fix: Trim unused markup, inline scripts and builder bloat.

AI search readiness 53%

Can ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews read, understand and cite this site?

• !

  AI crawler accesshigh

  robots.txt blocks search crawlers: Claude-SearchBot (Claude search), Claude-User (Claude browsing), PerplexityBot (Perplexity).

  Training-only crawlers blocked: ClaudeBot, Applebot-Extended, CCBot, meta-externalagent. That's a licensing choice – these companies document them as separate from their search crawlers.

  Fix: Allow Googlebot, Bingbot, OAI-SearchBot, Claude-SearchBot and PerplexityBot so search and AI tools can cite you (you can still block training-only bots such as GPTBot or Google-Extended).

  Make a new robots.txt with the free generator

  Read the guide: blocking AI training bots

• ✓

  Snippet controlshigh

  No snippet restrictions – search and AI answers can quote this page.

• ✗

  llms.txtlow

  No /llms.txt file. It's an optional, emerging convention – few AI tools are confirmed to read it yet, so this is low priority.

  Fix: Optionally add /llms.txt: a short Markdown summary of who you are with links to your key pages.

  Make one with the free llms.txt generator

  Read the guide: do you need llms.txt?

• ✓

  Question-led contentmedium

  4 heading(s) phrased as questions, e.g. “Autism Are experts changing their minds on a single autism spectrum?”.

• ✗

  Entity clarityhigh

  No Organization / LocalBusiness structured data – search engines and AI have to guess who runs this site.

  Fix: Add Organization or LocalBusiness JSON-LD with name, url, logo, contact details and sameAs links to your official profiles.

  Make the code with the free local business schema generator

  Read the guide: schema markup

• ✓

  Freshness signalsmedium

  The page shows when it was published or last updated.

• ✗

  Trust pages (E-E-A-T)medium

  Links found to about; missing contact and privacy.

  Fix: Link to About, Contact and Privacy pages from every page – they help visitors, Google and AI tools see who stands behind the content.

Structured data 0%

Machine-readable facts for rich results and AI.

• ✗

  JSON-LD present & validhigh

  No JSON-LD structured data.

  Fix: Add JSON-LD describing the business and the page (Organization/LocalBusiness, WebSite, WebPage or Article, BreadcrumbList).

  Make valid code with the free schema generator

  Read the guide: schema markup

• ✗

  Breadcrumbslow

  No BreadcrumbList markup.

  Fix: Add BreadcrumbList JSON-LD so Google shows the page's place in your site.

  Read the guide: internal linking

Links 88%

Internal linking, anchor text and broken links.

• ✓

  Internal linkinghigh

  170 internal and 11 external links.

• !

  Anchor text qualitymedium

  Same text used for different pages: “… … comments”.

  Fix: Make every link text describe its destination, e.g. “logo design prices” instead of “click here”.

  Check every link's wording with the free anchor text checker

  Read the guide: internal linking

• ✓

  Broken links (sample)high

  Checked 12 internal link(s).

  No broken links found.

  5 link(s) point to a redirect – link to the final address instead.

Performance 69%

Speed signals from the HTML and server. Real-user Core Web Vitals load below.

• ✓

  Server response (TTFB)high

  6 ms until the first response from our checker, including connection setup (Google rates TTFB good under 0.8 s, poor over 1.8 s).

• ✗

  HTML sizemedium

  977 kB of HTML – heavy for phones (we only analysed the first 1 MB).

  Fix: Remove inline bloat, base64 images and unused markup.

• ✓

  Compressionmedium

  Compressed with gzip.

• ✓

  Render-blocking resourceshigh

  0 blocking script(s) and 0 stylesheet(s) in <head>.

• !

  Scripts & third partiesmedium

  19 script tag(s); files loaded from 4 other domain(s): assets.guim.co.uk, static.guim.co.uk, sb.scorecardresearch.com, i.guim.co.uk.

  Fix: Remove unused tracking and widget scripts; every third party adds connection time.

  Read the guide: Core Web Vitals

• ✗

  Imagesmedium

  55 image(s).

  54 without width/height – can cause layout shift (CLS).

  15 image(s) after the first three aren't lazy-loaded.

  0 use WebP/AVIF or responsive srcset.

  Fix: Give every image width and height, lazy-load images below the fold (but not the main image) and serve WebP/AVIF.

  Read the guide: image SEO

• ✓

  Cachinglow

  Cache-Control: max-age=60, stale-while-revalidate=6, stale-if-error=864000, private

• ✓

  HTTP/3low

  Server advertises HTTP/3 (faster on mobile networks).

Security 100%

Visitor safety signals that browsers and Google check.

• ✓

  HTTPScritical

  Secure HTTPS with no mixed content.

• ✓

  HTTP → HTTPS redirecthigh

  http:// redirects to https://.

• ✓

  HSTSmedium

  HSTS: max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload

• ✓

  Security headerslow

  Present: CSP, nosniff, Referrer-Policy, Permissions-Policy, clickjacking protection.

• ✓

  Server fingerprintlow

  No X-Powered-By header (server: cloudflare).

Mobile & accessibility 83%

Usable on phones and by everyone – Google indexes the mobile version.

• ✓

  Mobile viewportcritical

  viewport: width=device-width,minimum-scale=1,initial-scale=1

• ✓

  Image alt textmedium

  All 55 images have alt text.

• ✓

  Form labelsmedium

  All 9 form fields are labelled.

• ✓

  Link nameslow

  Every link has a readable name.

• ✗

  Tap-to-contactmedium

  No tel: or mailto: links.

  Fix: Add a tap-to-call or tap-to-email button so phone visitors can contact you instantly.

  Read the guide: mobile-friendly websites

Local SEO not scored

This site doesn't look like a local business, so these checks are shown for information and not scored.

• i

  LocalBusiness markuphigh

  No LocalBusiness structured data.

• i

  Contact details on pagemedium

  No phone number found.

  No postcode found (fine for service-area businesses).

• i

  Map & directionslow

  No map or directions link.