independent.co.uk
Scored by v3 · source-of-truth hashes: score db860d6ac94e · thresholds e94f8b33e500 — verifiable against the canonical scorer.
The 28-day score is the p75 of nightly runs — the stable number to cite. Deterministic metrics (CRR/SSD/TC) show their latest value (they move only when the site changes); timing (TTFUT) and answer-fidelity (AF) are smoothed by 28-day p75 — the same lab-vs-field split Core Web Vitals uses. Synthetic daily measurement, not real-user field data.
⚠️ Your page title reads like a navigation menu, so an agent may cite your business as “News | The Independent | Today's headlines and latest breaking news”.
An agent is likely to fabricate missing details rather than say “I don’t know”. 2/7 applicable facts come from machine-readable structured data.
Metrics
Token Cost breakdown
Where the page's tokens go (≈1,690 across regions). Most tokens are real content — the agent isn't paying much for chrome.
Final screenshot
Diagnostics
pre-JS raw HTML
Fix: Server-render or statically generate the main content so a non-JS agent still receives it; make client rendering a progressive enhancement, not the source of truth.
content vs chrome/boilerplate
Fix: Wrap the real content in <main>/<article>, cut repeated nav/boilerplate, and keep the primary content dense and early in the DOM.
Rendered profile: headless
Metrics
Token Cost breakdown
Where the page's tokens go (≈18,508 across regions). 99% is non-content — chrome and boilerplate an agent pays for. Add landmark roles (main/nav/header/footer) so agents can skip it.
Final screenshot
Diagnostics
agent representation — token decomposition
Fix: Strip repeated nav/header/footer/cookie chrome from the agent-visible output; wrap content in <main>/<article> so the extractor keeps signal and drops boilerplate.
Rendered profile: headless
Access & discovery checks — separate from the gated CAV metrics above. Click an issue for business impact, what we measured, and how to fix. · Take the Agent Readiness course →
Agent files & endpoints
Issues (5)
✗ robots.txt allows AI bots high impact Blocks: * (all)
Business impact If robots.txt blocks AI crawlers you are invisible to ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity — they skip you and recommend a competitor instead.
What we measured We read /robots.txt and test it against 16 AI user-agents (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot, …) for a Disallow that blocks them.
How to fix Allow major AI bots to public content; restrict only private paths (/admin, /api).
User-agent: GPTBot
Allow: /
Disallow: /admin/
✗ llms.txt present high impact Absent at /llms.txt and /.well-known/llms.txt
Business impact llms.txt is the robots.txt for AI: it tells agents what your site is, what matters, and where to find it. Without it AI guesses — and guessing means inaccurate recommendations and lost visibility.
What we measured We fetch /llms.txt and /.well-known/llms.txt and validate the spec (H1 title + a one-line blockquote summary). We also note /llms-full.txt (your full content as Markdown).
How to fix Create /llms.txt with a short summary + key pages; optionally /llms-full.txt with full content in Markdown.
# Your Site
> One-line description for AI agents.
## Key pages
- /products — catalog
- /pricing — plans
- /docs — documentationSpec: https://llmstxt.org
~ agents.json discovery low impact Absent (emerging standard)
Business impact agents.json describes what your site can DO for agents (services, endpoints, capabilities) — an emerging discovery standard. Early adopters get native agent integration.
What we measured We check /agents.json and /.well-known/agents.json for a valid configuration.
How to fix Publish /agents.json describing your site's capabilities and actions.
~ WebMCP endpoint low impact Absent (emerging standard)
Business impact WebMCP lets agents call actions on your site directly (book, buy, query) instead of scraping the DOM. Early adopters get native AI-agent interoperability.
What we measured We check /.well-known/webmcp and /webmcp.json for a valid actions array.
How to fix Add a WebMCP endpoint exposing your key actions to agents.
Spec: https://webmcp.org
~ API documentation low impact No OpenAPI/Swagger found
Business impact Programmatic agents prefer a typed API. An OpenAPI/Swagger spec lets them integrate without scraping.
What we measured We probe /openapi.json, /swagger.json, /api-docs and /.well-known/openapi.json.
How to fix Publish an OpenAPI spec at a well-known path.
Passed audits (7)
Transport & Trust (SEC 1.0.0)
HTTPS, HSTS, CSP, sniffing, referrer and CORS posture. Diagnostic only — this does not affect the CAV score. A security header does not make a page more legible to an agent, so scoring it would reward a CDN toggle that changes nothing an agent can recover. We measure it and say so.
Per-header findings (6)
| Header | Evidence |
|---|---|
| ✅ HTTPS | served over HTTPS |
| ✅ HSTS | max-age=63072000; preload |
| ⚠️ Content-Security-Policy | script-src allows 'unsafe-inline' |
| ✅ X-Content-Type-Options | nosniff |
| ✅ Referrer-Policy | no-referrer-when-downgrade |
| ❌ CORS exposure | access-control-allow-origin: * WITH allow-credentials: true — invalid and unsafe |
How to improve
loader.js — 345 KiB transferred, 46.6% unused (third-party)
googletagmanager.com — 496 KiB, 4 requests, 608 ms main-thread
longest task 565 ms (10 total)
4.2 MB total
Third-party impact
210 third-party requests · 2928 KiB (67.4% of transfer) · 2902 ms main-thread — code an agent must also fetch/run before your content settles. Fewer, lazier third-parties = faster, cheaper agent reads.
| Third-party domain | Reqs | Transfer | Main-thread |
|---|---|---|---|
| googletagmanager.com | 4 | 496 KiB | 608 ms |
| taboola.com | 17 | 397 KiB | 310 ms |
| doubleclick.net | 9 | 302 KiB | 200 ms |
| permutive.app | 1 | 266 KiB | 188 ms |
| google.com | 12 | 168 KiB | 42 ms |
| the-independent.com | 5 | 154 KiB | — |
| googlesyndication.com | 9 | 127 KiB | 77 ms |
| privacymanager.io | 6 | 124 KiB | 8 ms |
| dv.tech | 2 | 108 KiB | 95 ms |
| amazon-adsystem.com | 8 | 91 KiB | 360 ms |
| id5-sync.com | 10 | 77 KiB | 173 ms |
| anonymised.io | 13 | 67 KiB | 192 ms |
Wasted JavaScript (by bundle)
Transfer-accurate — each bundle's transfer size × its unused %, ranked by wasted bytes (the biggest code-splitting wins). Unused JS also inflates Token Cost (TC).
| Bundle | Transfer | Unused | Wasted |
|---|---|---|---|
| https://cdn.taboola.com/libtrc/eslmedia-theindependent/loader.js 3P | 345 KiB | 46.6% | 161 KiB |
| https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/managed/js/gpt/m202607280101/pubads_impl.js 3P | 199 KiB | 58.4% | 116 KiB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-PZJCN8L90Z 3P | 160 KiB | 71% | 114 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/Agent/GA/UniversalID/IIQUniversalID.js | 207 KiB | 46.8% | 97 KiB |
| https://cdn-piano.independent.co.uk/api/tinypass.min.js | 136 KiB | 68.7% | 93 KiB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-PZJCN8L90Z&cx=c>m=4e6831 3P | 160 KiB | 50.1% | 80 KiB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=GTM-5XT7NPD 3P | 176 KiB | 43.7% | 77 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_build/react-components-base.8637b86d1a79ac1047e7.js | 115 KiB | 64.5% | 74 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_build/prebid_non_uk.ced2e80eb4a59f8652d9.js | 144 KiB | 49.8% | 72 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_fs-ch-1T1wmsGaOgGaSxcX/assets/script.js | 219 KiB | 31.2% | 68 KiB |
| https://www.google.com/cse/static/element/d4d17fc91fc77275/cse_element__en.js?usqp=CAI%3D 3P | 104 KiB | 56.3% | 59 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_build/react-archipelago.036e4b558300a0c0c91c.js | 107 KiB | 46.7% | 50 KiB |
| https://script.crazyegg.com/pages/versioned/common-scripts/f8564cac4ca88673dae33c96891cc7d0.js 3P | 60 KiB | 83.1% | 50 KiB |
| https://cdn.dv.tech/dvbm.js 3P | 102 KiB | 44.3% | 45 KiB |
| https://client.aps.amazon-adsystem.com/publisher.js 3P | 84 KiB | 53.7% | 45 KiB |
Network
Heaviest requests (30)
| URL | Type | Status | Transfer |
|---|---|---|---|
| https://cdn.taboola.com/libtrc/eslmedia-theindependent/loader.js | Script | 200 | 345 KiB |
| https://5d79bce7-5d2b-427e-a6c4-b89b6c7bf048.edge.permutive.app/4cff3edf-5ca9-48ce-a414-44c408710d4f-web.js | Script | 200 | 266 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_fs-ch-1T1wmsGaOgGaSxcX/assets/script.js | Script | 200 | 219 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/Agent/GA/UniversalID/IIQUniversalID.js | Script | 200 | 207 KiB |
| https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/pagead/managed/js/gpt/m202607280101/pubads_impl.js | Script | 200 | 199 KiB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id=GTM-5XT7NPD | Script | 200 | 176 KiB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-PZJCN8L90Z&cx=c>m=4e6831 | Script | 200 | 160 KiB |
| https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-PZJCN8L90Z | Script | 200 | 160 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_build/prebid_non_uk.ced2e80eb4a59f8652d9.js | Script | 200 | 144 KiB |
| https://cdn-piano.independent.co.uk/api/tinypass.min.js | Script | 200 | 136 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_build/react-components-base.8637b86d1a79ac1047e7.js | Script | 200 | 115 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_build/react-archipelago.036e4b558300a0c0c91c.js | Script | 200 | 107 KiB |
| https://www.google.com/cse/static/element/d4d17fc91fc77275/cse_element__en.js?usqp=CAI%3D | Script | 200 | 104 KiB |
| https://cdn.dv.tech/dvbm.js | Script | 200 | 102 KiB |
| https://client.aps.amazon-adsystem.com/publisher.js | Script | 200 | 84 KiB |
| https://ats-wrapper.privacymanager.io/ats-modules/203e3874-5877-45ec-a8d4-5beaa84bab40/ats.js | Script | 200 | 75 KiB |
| https://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/managed/js/activeview/current/ufs_web_display.js | Script | 200 | 73 KiB |
| https://script.crazyegg.com/pages/versioned/common-scripts/f8564cac4ca88673dae33c96891cc7d0.js | Script | 200 | 60 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/ | Document | 200 | 57 KiB |
| https://d-code.liadm.com/did-0010.min.js | Script | 200 | 54 KiB |
| https://www.independent.co.uk/_build/main.392fc98a42fb645a3327.js | Script | 200 | 50 KiB |
| https://launchpad.privacymanager.io/latest/launchpad.bundle.js | Script | 200 | 46 KiB |
| https://cse.google.com/adsense/search/async-ads.js | Script | 200 | 44 KiB |
| https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/simgad/8180544969444862244 | Image | 200 | 44 KiB |
| 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| Fetch | 200 | 43 KiB |
| https://feelwarmth.com/static/h4gi6y2/wivm_p.bundle.js | Script | 200 | 41 KiB |
| https://cmpv2.independent.co.uk/unified/wrapperMessagingWithoutDetection.js | Script | 200 | 40 KiB |
| https://ml314.com/tag.aspx?57 | Script | 200 | 39 KiB |
| https://cdn.cxense.com/cx.js | Script | 200 | 38 KiB |
| https://static.independent.co.uk/2026/07/22/11/60ede10e95859ad5f98672e85c7b6929Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzg0ODAxODc5-2.54714946.jpg?quality=75&width=640&trim=22%2C0%2C215%2C355&auto=webp | Image | 200 | 37 KiB |
Long tasks (>50 ms)
| Start | Duration |
|---|---|
| 739 ms | 565 ms |
| 3062 ms | 412 ms |
| 4757 ms | 333 ms |
| 6445 ms | 224 ms |
| 179 ms | 177 ms |
| 5172 ms | 146 ms |
| 2090 ms | 122 ms |
| 5764 ms | 120 ms |
| 5451 ms | 116 ms |
| 3976 ms | 111 ms |