diagnostic · one of 36 free, no counter
Head order
Is anything in this head in the wrong place?
The head is one of the few places in HTML where order has consequences. A charset declared after the first kilobyte means the parser has already guessed; a render-blocking stylesheet before a preconnect wastes the connection; a viewport meta after a stylesheet means the first layout used the wrong width. All three are ordering bugs and none of them show up anywhere else.
Reach it Press ⌘ + K on any tab and type head order. Ctrl + K on Windows and Linux
in the panel · free, no counter
What this actually is
meta, title, canonical and og tags in the order they loadOn any page whose startup is slower than its size explains, after any change to a tag manager, and whenever a <meta> has been added by a plugin that put it wherever it liked.
Asked about this diagnostic
4 of themWhy does the charset have to be early?
Because the parser has to guess an encoding until it is told, and it only reads the first kilobyte looking. A charset after that point means the guess already happened.
Does filtering renumber the head?
No. A filtered run is folded into a marker carrying its count, so the positions you see are the positions in the document. A filter that renumbered would make every finding’s position wrong.
Is a preload always an improvement?
No, and it is reported rather than graded on that basis. A preload for something the parser would have found anyway competes with what it is preloading against.
What about tags a script adds later?
They are in the reading, because the reading is of the head as it stands. Whether they were served or injected is what the Mutations diagnostic answers.
how to use head order
- Open Head order to read the head in parser order rather than as source.
- Look for the three that cost: a late charset, a blocking sheet before a preconnect, a late viewport.
- Each finding carries its own fix. Apply them in the order the parser meets them.
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Re-run after any tag-manager change - that is where a
<meta>gets inserted wherever it likes.
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