Site Speed
Site speed relates to how fast a site is able to load the content and resources contained on it. Speed affects a user’s experience of the website while also impacting how efficiently search engines are able to identify, crawl, and index content. Our Hangout Notes will help you understand the importance of having a fast site, along with advice to improve site speed. To learn more about the most important considerations around this topic, make sure you read our Ultimate Guide to Site Speed & Performance.
Web.dev is Built on the Lighthouse Infrastructure in the Back-end
Google’s web.dev tool is built on Lighthouse in the back-end to maintain consistency with other tools.
Pages With Long Download Times Reduce Googlebot’s Crawl Budget
If a page takes a long time to download then this will use up crawl budget for Googlebot, meaning it will have less time to crawl other pages on your site. Look at the ‘time spent downloading a page’ report in GSC to spot these issues.
Combine Separate CSS, JS & Tracking URLs to Increase Googlebot Requests to Your Server
To improve site speed and allow Googlebot to send requests to your server more frequently, reduce the number of external URLs that need to be loaded. For example, combine CSS files into one URL, or as few URLs as possible.
New PageSpeed Insights Tool Uses Lighthouse Data & Runs Lighthouse Audits
The new PageSpeed Insights tool runs Lighthouse audits for you using data from across different devices.
Inconsistency in PSI Alerts Suggests Being on the Edge of Google’s Speed Requirements
The PageSpeed Insights team try to maintain stable tests for websites, so if a site has fluctuations between getting alerts and passing the tests, this suggests the site is right on the edge of Google’s speed requirements.
Testing Tools Can Incorrectly Show Scripts Aren’t Optimised
Testing tools, like PageSpeed Insights, can show that scripts such as Google Analytics or AdSense aren’t optimised because they are configured for specific browsers.
Page Speed Update Will Use Scale to Assess Speed
The Page Speed update will be on a scale where: the faster pages are, the more Google can take this into account. This approach is opposed to Google’s previous speed update, which only differentiated between very slow pages and all other pages.
Google Reassessing Use of Scores in Speed Testing
Google are reassessing their use of scores as part of testing tools, like PageSpeed Insights, as this can result in people focusing too much on addressing things that will improve their score rather than other areas which will have a bigger overall impact.
Load Scripts After Rendering to Improve Page Speed
Consider embedding scripts so that they load after the page has rendered to improve load time, especially if it is only required for functionality.
Google Will Determine Page Speed Based On User Experience
Google’s mobile speed update will use a number of different factors to determine speed, including some metrics from Chrome that provide information about actual user experience. This means that you should optimise your site to be faster for users and not just Googlebot.