5 ms·

Google's pagespeed service is hot garbage. You can do things that make the page load significantly slower and get a perfect score than if you had a lower pagesp

Google's pagespeed service is hot garbage. You can do things that make the page load significantly slower and get a perfect score than if you had a lower pagespeed score with a much faster page load. I also find it strange how I can get an A on every other page speed service, including GTMetrix, but get an F on Google's tes(s). Totally useless.

billyhoffman 8y ago
Isn't GTMetrix just a combined Page Speed Insights and YSlow audit?
- partiallypro 8y ago
  It uses an older version of Pagespeed, yes.
- josefresco 8y ago
  I never pay attention to the "grades" only the data, especially the waterfall graph/data. The grades are ridiculous, and mostly meant to cause alarm. You can score 100/100 on almost every test, but get a "D" overall because you scored poorly on 1 or 2 tests. It's great tool for techs, but in the hands of a client almost every result/score appears terrible.
wild_preference 8y ago
Meh, these tests are just good ways to find obvious problems with your site. Fixating on the overall score seems like an indication of a different problem. For example, you can't change the caching behavior of google-analytics.js, and it's usually intractable to split apart your CSS to optimize for above-the-fold content. Oh well, you didn't get a perfect score. Stay practical.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  Try selling that to a client that keeps using the test against a site that is A rated everywhere else because Google's brand has fooled them into thinking a perfect score means better SEO.
  - arkitaip 8y ago
    True. This is like when movie studios start obsessing about the Metacritic ranking on their movies instead of focusing on the quality of the movies.
  - savethefuture 8y ago
    This is a problem we run into, clients will run their site through a speed tester then give us a list of things to fix...without having a clue of what the ratings and results even mean.
  - wild_preference 8y ago
    Right, that would be an example of a "different problem." I'd be hard pressed to let stupid things client/managers can do direct how this sort of tool should work. For example, it'd be silly to demand "score inflation" just because your client is unreasonable. Or rather, if a client is making your life hard, I don't think it's the world that needs to change. What's your solution if your client measures your success by punching their website into https://www.worthofweb.com/calculator/ https://www.worthofweb.com/calculator/? And doesn't take you seriously enough to listen to you in general?
rocky1138 8y ago
Google Pagespeed once recommended that I enable gzip compression on an embedded Google map. https://johnrockefeller.net/google-pagespeed-_/ https://johnrockefeller.net/google-pagespeed-_/
- arkitaip 8y ago
  Most performance profilers will penalize you for embedding Google Analytics and Google Fonts because they have poor caching settings. What's so important about those resources that they can't be cached for longer periods?
  - gondo 8y ago
    tracking
    - jopsen 8y ago
      https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_... I'm no lawyer, but I read that as it is not used for tracking users. (full disclosure: I work at Google, on something unrelated)
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - philtar 8y ago
        Do you have a guess why those assets are not cached more aggressively?
        fantyoon 8y ago
        This is a complete guess but I suppose one request everyday would be enough to get atleast some idea of how popular any given font is. The page says its to keep them updated but I highly doubt that would be the reason.
m3nu 8y ago
Doesn't work against my S3-hosted static site? "Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error"
- foxylad 8y ago
  Same for my Cloudflare-fronted Appengine site.
  - vinniejames 8y ago
    Same on multiple domains, I think their site is broken
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - zwaps 8y ago
      Same here, custom hosted website.
amygdyl 8y ago
I said this in reply to QUIC apparently ignoring hardware TLS offload... Is this for real? Even Quick Assist? I am watching the internet be developed by the giants for the giants. In my memory, giants didn't act like giants. "At scale" wasn't a preprocessor. Browser developer tools were written to help you participate in conversation, not play unending catch up in translation, the meaning lost in acoustics of auditoria for the life of me I would think giants could make intelligible.
rawoke083600 8y ago
I agree it's not perfect! But my view is that if they(Google) did the effort todo pagespeed, then lighthouse, then integrate lighthouse in Chrome.. and now in a separate website... Some of the metrics must be import for your rankings/site - even if only indirectly (slow site etc)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jansan 8y ago
On our website Google's pagespeed mainly complained about the Google Analytics snippets.

billyhoffman 8y ago

Isn't GTMetrix just a combined Page Speed Insights and YSlow audit?

partiallypro 8y ago
It uses an older version of Pagespeed, yes.
josefresco 8y ago
I never pay attention to the "grades" only the data, especially the waterfall graph/data. The grades are ridiculous, and mostly meant to cause alarm. You can score 100/100 on almost every test, but get a "D" overall because you scored poorly on 1 or 2 tests. It's great tool for techs, but in the hands of a client almost every result/score appears terrible.

wild_preference 8y ago

Meh, these tests are just good ways to find obvious problems with your site. Fixating on the overall score seems like an indication of a different problem. For example, you can't change the caching behavior of google-analytics.js, and it's usually intractable to split apart your CSS to optimize for above-the-fold content. Oh well, you didn't get a perfect score. Stay practical.

partiallypro 8y ago
Try selling that to a client that keeps using the test against a site that is A rated everywhere else because Google's brand has fooled them into thinking a perfect score means better SEO.
- arkitaip 8y ago
  True. This is like when movie studios start obsessing about the Metacritic ranking on their movies instead of focusing on the quality of the movies.
- savethefuture 8y ago
  This is a problem we run into, clients will run their site through a speed tester then give us a list of things to fix...without having a clue of what the ratings and results even mean.
- wild_preference 8y ago
  Right, that would be an example of a "different problem." I'd be hard pressed to let stupid things client/managers can do direct how this sort of tool should work. For example, it'd be silly to demand "score inflation" just because your client is unreasonable. Or rather, if a client is making your life hard, I don't think it's the world that needs to change. What's your solution if your client measures your success by punching their website into https://www.worthofweb.com/calculator/ https://www.worthofweb.com/calculator/? And doesn't take you seriously enough to listen to you in general?

rocky1138 8y ago

Google Pagespeed once recommended that I enable gzip compression on an embedded Google map. https://johnrockefeller.net/google-pagespeed-_/ https://johnrockefeller.net/google-pagespeed-_/

arkitaip 8y ago
Most performance profilers will penalize you for embedding Google Analytics and Google Fonts because they have poor caching settings. What's so important about those resources that they can't be cached for longer periods?
- gondo 8y ago
  tracking
  - jopsen 8y ago
    https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_google_fonts_api_mean_for_the_privacy_of_my_users https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq#what_does_using_the_... I'm no lawyer, but I read that as it is not used for tracking users. (full disclosure: I work at Google, on something unrelated)
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - philtar 8y ago
      Do you have a guess why those assets are not cached more aggressively?
      - fantyoon 8y ago
        This is a complete guess but I suppose one request everyday would be enough to get atleast some idea of how popular any given font is. The page says its to keep them updated but I highly doubt that would be the reason.

m3nu 8y ago

Doesn't work against my S3-hosted static site? "Error: 500 from Lighthouse API: Internal Server Error"

foxylad 8y ago
Same for my Cloudflare-fronted Appengine site.
- vinniejames 8y ago
  Same on multiple domains, I think their site is broken
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - zwaps 8y ago
    Same here, custom hosted website.

amygdyl 8y ago

I said this in reply to QUIC apparently ignoring hardware TLS offload... Is this for real? Even Quick Assist? I am watching the internet be developed by the giants for the giants. In my memory, giants didn't act like giants. "At scale" wasn't a preprocessor. Browser developer tools were written to help you participate in conversation, not play unending catch up in translation, the meaning lost in acoustics of auditoria for the life of me I would think giants could make intelligible.

rawoke083600 8y ago

I agree it's not perfect! But my view is that if they(Google) did the effort todo pagespeed, then lighthouse, then integrate lighthouse in Chrome.. and now in a separate website... Some of the metrics must be import for your rankings/site - even if only indirectly (slow site etc)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jansan 8y ago

On our website Google's pagespeed mainly complained about the Google Analytics snippets.