Website readiness profile · Snapshot 23 October 2026
theverge.com
theverge.com's public homepage, certificate and DNS checked against 31 practices and compared with 3,856 News & Media sites.
- Readiness index
- 80/100
- Ahead of
- 90%
- Practices observed
- 22/31
- Popularity band
- Top 50K
News & Media median 68
of measured News & Media sites
0 of 31 could not be measured
Chrome UX Report top-sites list
Readiness by lane
Green: theverge.com. Thin bar: News & Media peer median.
Enable
95/100
Peers 89
Harden
71/100
Peers 56
Accelerate
85/100
Peers 68
Recover
0/100
Peers 11
Priority fixes for theverge.com
Ordered by impact and by how common each practice is among peers.
Priority 1 · Accelerate
Modern image formats in use
Observed: The homepage had 106 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.
44% of News & Media 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
Priority 2 · Harden
Certificate lifetime of 100 days or less
Observed: The certificate from GlobalSign nv-sa had a 198-day validity period, longer than the 100-day maximum that applies from March 2027.
What to do: Move to automated issuance and renewal now, while you still have time to test it.
66% of News & Media peers do this.
Priority 3 · Harden
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
Observed: The homepage response did not include X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff.
What to do: Send X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff on all responses and make sure each file is served with the correct Content-Type.
On Next.js: Add it in next.config.js headers().
42% of News & Media peers do this.
Priority 4 · Harden
CAA records limit who can issue certificates
Observed: No CAA record was found for theverge.com, so any public certificate authority may issue for it.
What to do: Publish CAA records naming every CA you actually use, including the CAs your CDN uses for managed certificates. Add an iodef contact if you want reports.
13% of News & Media peers do this.
What theverge.com already does well
Practices fewer than half of News & Media peers use.
- Content Security Policy presentContent-Security-Policy present.29% of peers
- HSTS kept for at least a yearHSTS with a 365-day max-age.35% of peers
- HTTP/3 advertisedHTTP/3 advertised.36% of peers
What we saw
- Homepage checked
- https://www.theverge.com/
- Homepage response
- HTTP 200
- TLS
- TLSv1.3, HTTP/2
- Certificate
- GlobalSign, 198-day validity, expiring 2027-01-11
- CDN or edge
- Fastly
- Platform or framework
- WordPress, Next.js
- DNS operators
- Amazon Route 53
- HSTS
- max-age 365 days, preload
- DMARC policy
- p=reject
- Homepage HTML
- 957 KB, br
- Images on homepage
- 106 (jpg 1616, png 255)
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
Not observed 9
Observed 22
- HTTP requests move to HTTPS
- HSTS kept for at least a year
- TLS 1.3 negotiated
- Certificate has more than 14 days left
- DMARC policy enforces quarantine or reject
- Framing restricted
- Content Security Policy present
- HTTP/2 negotiated
- HTTP/3 advertised
- HTML compressed
- Static files cached for 30 days or more
- Offscreen images lazy-loaded
- No render-blocking scripts in <head>
- robots.txt published
- XML sitemap discoverable
- Canonical URL declared
- Meta description written
- Mobile viewport configured
- Structured data present
- Social preview image set
- Page language declared
- At most one redirect to the homepage
Own theverge.com?
Re-run the checks after a change, or verify the site in a free workspace to save reports with history, compare against similar sites and competitors, and track a private action plan. What owners get.
Live status for this site: Status Is Down: theverge.com. This profile covers configuration only.