akc.org

Readiness by lane

Green: akc.org. Thin bar: Pet Services peer median.

Priority fixes for akc.org

Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.

1. Priority 1 · Accelerate

   Modern image formats in use

   Observed: The homepage had 42 images and none used WebP or AVIF.

   Why it matters: WebP and AVIF are typically much smaller than JPEG or PNG at similar quality, and images are often the heaviest part of a page.

   What to do: Serve WebP or AVIF with a JPEG or PNG fallback, either through an image CDN or by generating both formats at build time.

   On WordPress: WordPress has supported WebP uploads since 5.8 and AVIF since 6.5; image plugins or the host can convert existing images.

   47% of Pet Services peers do this. Limit: Based on the homepage HTML delivered to an automated client; scripts that run later were not executed.

   Guide: AVIF, WebP, JPEG, and PNG: Choose the Right Image Format

2. Priority 2 · Harden

   HSTS kept for at least a year

   Observed: Strict-Transport-Security was sent with a max-age of 0 days, below the one-year benchmark.

   What to do: Send Strict-Transport-Security on HTTPS responses. Start with a short max-age (for example 300 seconds), confirm every subdomain works over HTTPS, then raise it in steps to 31536000. Add includeSubDomains only when all subdomains are HTTPS. HSTS preload is optional and hard to undo; hstspreload.org itself does not recommend it by default.

   On Fastly: Add the header in VCL or a header rule as described in Fastly's HSTS guide.

   30% of Pet Services peers do this.

   Guide: HTTPS and TLS Guide for Website Owners

3. Priority 3 · Harden

   Framing restricted

   Observed: The homepage did not send frame-ancestors or X-Frame-Options, so other sites may frame it.

   What to do: Send Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'self' (or a list of trusted origins). X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN covers older browsers.

   56% of Pet Services peers do this.

   Guide: A Practical Website Health Check for Owners

4. Priority 4 · Accelerate

   No render-blocking scripts in <head>

   Observed: The homepage <head> loaded 3 external scripts without async or defer.

   What to do: Add defer to scripts that need the DOM, async to independent ones such as analytics, or move them to the end of the body.

   On WordPress: Since WordPress 6.3, scripts can be registered with a defer or async loading strategy.

   31% of Pet Services peers do this.

   Guide: Control Third-Party Scripts Before They Control Your Page

What akc.org already does well

Practices fewer than half of Pet Services peers use.

• Reachable over IPv6IPv6 address published.35% of peers
• DMARC policy enforces quarantine or rejectDMARC policy p=quarantine.49% of peers

What we saw

Homepage checked

https://www.akc.org/

Homepage response

HTTP 200

TLS

TLSv1.3, HTTP/2

Certificate

Let's Encrypt, 89-day validity, expiring 2026-11-29

CDN or edge

Fastly, Pantheon

Platform or framework

WordPress

DNS operators

1 self-run or other nameserver domain

HSTS

max-age 0 days

DMARC policy

p=quarantine

Homepage HTML

719 KB, gzip

Images on homepage

42 (gif 35, png 6, svg 1)

Limits: homepage only, one location, one moment. Header checks reflect the homepage response; other pages may differ.

Stack and providers

Seen in the homepage response, certificate and DNS. Provider pages compare how their customers configure the same checks.

All 31 checks

Select a gap for the method and fix. How each check works

Compare with other Pet Services sites

• freekibble.com68
• gooddog.com65
• kiwoko.com66
• petmd.com66
• superzoo.cl64

Pet Services readiness benchmark