M
msn.com
CRO Recommendations — August 2026
Measured, not inferred

Technical audit

Everything on this page was measured directly against msn.com on August 2026 and is reproducible.

Core Web Vitals

Field data unavailablethe configured Google API key does not have the PageSpeed Insights API enabled; enable it in Google Cloud, or supply a dedicated key at u/admin/PAGESPEED_API_KEY

Same audits, on the five pages that actually get traffic

Homepage first, then the URLs Google’s ranked-keywords data says are the site’s real front doors. Lab vitals and an independent on-page score for each — same measurements, same rules. A defect that repeats across all five is a platform-wide problem; one that only shows on the homepage is a template-specific fix.

/en-us/weather
Ranks #36 for “weather” · 124 000 000 monthly Google searches
Lab performance
57 /100
LCP
3.0 s
CLS
0.001
TBT
1,500 ms
FCP
2.8 s
On-page score
83.44 /100
Lab performance
43 /100
LCP
5.4 s
CLS
0.116
TBT
1,130 ms
FCP
2.5 s
On-page score
— /100
/en-us/sports/nba
Ranks #30 for “nba” · 30 400 000 monthly Google searches
Lab performance
39 /100
LCP
9.1 s
CLS
0.058
TBT
1,890 ms
FCP
1.9 s
On-page score
— /100
/en-us/news
Ranks #43 for “news” · 20 400 000 monthly Google searches
Lab performance
25 /100
LCP
12.2 s
CLS
0.301
TBT
1,140 ms
FCP
3.5 s
On-page score
— /100
/en-us/sports/mlb
Ranks #34 for “mlb” · 13 600 000 monthly Google searches
Lab performance
39 /100
LCP
9.3 s
CLS
0.076
TBT
1,690 ms
FCP
1.9 s
On-page score
— /100

Independent second opinion — DataForSEO page audit

On-page score87.93 / 100 DataForSEO's own crawler, different infrastructure than this audit's
Time to interactive192 ms Their crawler's desktop load — compare with the mobile lab numbers above
DOM complete481 ms Full document parse time
Scripts on page8 Independent count — corroborates the script-weight measurement
DOM size48 KB Bigger documents parse slower on cheap phones
Structural flagsnone raised Duplicate/broken checks from their crawl

Domain, stack & authority

Domain age31.8 yearsRegistered 1994-11-10 (MarkMonitor Inc.) — longevity is a quiet trust signal
Detected technologiesKestrel, Microsoft ASP.NETFrom public fingerprints — informs which fixes are platform-native vs custom work
Backlink domain rank641 / 1000Link-graph authority; context for how hard SERP real estate is to move
Referring domains622 53358 556 764 total backlinks; spam score 27 / 100
Organic keywords ranked3 063 733176 037 in Google's top 10; ≈25 337 305 est. monthly organic visits (DataForSEO model)

Message match — search snippet vs landing headline

The brand's own Google snippets against the homepage headline layer (title, H1s, primary CTAs — currently “”). A promise that appears in the snippet but not in the headline is a scent break at the very first click. Token comparison, computed — not a model's reading.

Search snippetHeadline overlap Promises missing from headline
MSN | Personalized News, Top Headlines, Live Updates and ...0%none

Speed & delivery

CheckMeasuredWhy it matters
Server response (TTFB proxy) 561 ms Under 800ms is healthy
HTML document weight804 KB Every byte is parsed before first paint
Scripts loaded 0 inline + 0 external The usual root cause of slow interactivity
Compressiongzip gzip / brotli on HTML responses
HTTPSpassWith redirect from http://

Search & metadata

CheckStatusNotes
Title tagmissing 15–60 characters recommended
Meta descriptionmissing 70–160 characters recommended
Canonical URLmissingPrevents duplicate-content splits
Open Graph (og:title / og:image)missing Controls link previews when shared
Structured data (JSON-LD)missing Enables rich results in search
Indexableyes no robots meta restrictions
robots.txtpass Should reference the sitemap
sitemap.xmlmissing Crawl coverage for search engines

Security headers

HeaderStatusProtects against
CSPpassBlocks injected scripts (XSS)
HSTSpassForces HTTPS on every future visit
Referrer-PolicymissingControls what leaks in the Referer header
X-Frame-OptionspassPrevents clickjacking via iframes
Permissions-PolicymissingLimits camera/mic/geolocation access
X-Content-Type-OptionspassStops MIME-type sniffing

Accessibility

CheckCountStandard
Buttons without an accessible name 150 / 190 WCAG 2.2 — 4.1.2 Name, Role, Value
Images missing alt text 21 / 260 WCAG 2.2 — 1.1.1 Non-text Content
Unlabelled form inputs 0 / 1 WCAG 2.2 — 3.3.2 Labels or Instructions
Links without text 27 / 164 Screen readers announce these as "link"