Google Launches Page Speed Online, The Web Faster

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Page Speed Online: Google Is Committed To Make The Web Faster

[note]Google Labs has been taken down by Google last week. Despite the move, the Page Speed Online test site continues on, only it has been moved to the developers part of Google. All links below have been updated to reflect this change.[/note]

Officially released today is Google’s new online page speed performance, a webmasters tool that allows users to verify the performance of any website at any time. We have all seen before that Google has been constantly “pushing” hard over the performance of the web and as you all now, page speed is now an important ranking factor. Google believes that a faster web is a better web and the “Page Speed Tool ” which was before available only as an addon, now runs as a web-based application.

Here’s an excerpt of the official announcement on Google’s Webmaster Central:

At Google, we’re striving to make the whole web fast. As part of that effort, we’re launching a new web-based tool in Google Labs, Page Speed Online, which analyzes the performance of web pages and gives specific suggestions for making them faster. Page Speed Online is available from any browser, at any time. This allows website owners to get immediate access to Page Speed performance suggestions so they can make their pages faster.

Just given it a test drive now and WOW, Google’s Online Page Speed tool is fast. It generates an overall score and immediately suggests by order of importance, areas where improvements can be made. Such suggestions are labeled as High, Medium and Low priority.

Google Page Speed Online

Clicking on each of the suggestions will take you to more detailed explanation as to how your website speed can be optimized. As an example, my website has a score of 80 over a possible 100. That’s probably low and after running the test, I can immediately take action on some issues that will make my site faster. As it appears, I can greatly improve my sites performance if I compress some of my images. So that definitely goes in my todo list for this weekend 🙂

Page Speed OnlineA fast site is good for the eyes of Google and most importantly for the overall users experience, namely your visitors. Most of the suggestions require minimal effort although Google does mention that this tool requires at least an intermediate level of expertise. Which makes me believe that….

Google Page Speed Online Helps You get More Business?

Just out of the box, and far fetched, you can use this tool to impress a potential client, or monitor your progress to see how things are doing with your website’s speed optimization… Heck, that’s a new one to explore, WSO… Website Speed optimization. Offer your services to someone who suffers from a “tech phobia” syndrome 🙂 I’m sure you can put this to good use, and I would like you to tell me right now (quick), what other benefits you think can derive by using this tool (if any)?

Page Speed Online Test: Final Thoughts

Anyway, that’s it. Just wanted you to know about this awesome new tool, in case you have not heard about it yet. What do think? Is this, Google trying to tell us something? Do you believe that Google’s page speed online tool can indeed help you improve your sites performance? What steps are you taking to increase blog speed?

DiTesco

DiTesco is a Business and Inbound Marketing Consultant, and founder of iBlogzone.com. iBlogzone's main objective is to help startups and small business owners achieve success in their online ventures. | More About Me and my Digital Marketing Services in SP Brazil.

37 thoughts on “Google Launches Page Speed Online, The Web Faster”

  • Great find, DiTesco! I tested my site and it gave me some areas to work on. Of course I new about some of those issues and am going to try and figure out how I can fix the speed issues. So far I like this tool and I will have to play with before I can say I like or not.

    As for Google, I believe them when they want faster websites. After all I like faster websites as well. If they can gently suggest webmasters should speed things up, then I am all for it.

    • Hi James. Yeah, this tool does give a heads up of what “Google” thinks of our site, which is what I am particularly interested in. Since it was just launched, I am still having some “disagreements” with what they are showing, specially cacheable items, but I am sure that over time it will be more accurate.

  • Awesome tip! I tested my Website and as well have to do some work to improve the speed. I also like that you can test for desktop or mobile devices.
    Definitely something worth checking out!

    Thanks,
    Pit would like for you to check this out… Google new +1 button

    • Hi Pit. Yeah, I agree with you. It is cool that you can also test for speed on mobile devices, something that is increasing in popularity lately. We’ll see how it delivers as time goes by.

  • I just ran the test, and I was glad to see I didn’t have any high-priority items to work on. Many of the items listed are from other sights – such as analytics code or images. Unfortunately, unless I eliminate them from my blog, I can’t see that improving.

    It is good that they finally have a test tool that we can use, at least it can help determine what Google thinks about the speed of our sites.

    • Hi Paul. My thoughts exactly, “what Google thinks about the speed of our site”. And you are right, Google suggests many improvements that unfortunately we can can not outright eliminate, specially external calls. Thanks for stopping by.

  • I do think a faster site is better for everyone. The internet has made us even more impatient consumers, so we do expect websites to load as fast as we can click, especially now site owners can no longer blame it on slow internet connections!

    So Google is right to put some emphasis on this as an indication of ‘quality’. After all, a site that takes ages to load is not a good ‘experience’ for someone leaving Google.

    P.S. I think 80 is pretty good score, as 100 is the maximum. I just tried Google.com and it scored 97.

    • Google at 97 score? That’s fast.. well they are on the cloud so that makes sense 🙂 Anyway, you are absolutely right Mark, a site that loads quickly is an indication of quality and reason why emphasis is also being put on speed. After all, the “telex” generation has long been gone, lol. Thanks for stopping by.

  • Great update, I usually use Yslow 2 to do this but it seems, we have another alternative now. Thanks

    • Hi Tinh. Yeah, this new page online speed tool is indeed a great alternative and to me a welcome addition 🙂 All the best

  • Yeah, I have seen this tool on my Google Webmaster account but still cannot figure out how to use it. Thanks for this article, I now have enough description how I will utilize this new Google feature.

    • HI Dana. This feature is in fact accessible in Google’s webmaster tools, however, I must say that it is quite complicated to use as they suggest the use of “firebug” and “page speed addon”. This new tool eliminates all that as it is web-based and you don’t even have to have an account for it to work. Thanks for stopping by

  • This is nice tool from Google, to help developers to make their site better, avoiding those things that are causing low speed for their sites. But these should be a little more detailed, for those who are just entered in this can also get benefit from this. But overall it is helpful.

    • Hi William. You are right about the details. however and since I found Google’s site pretty much “self-explanatory”, I figured that there was really no need or replicating more info here, but rather just to make my visitors aware of this new tool. There is however one issue about it.. the suggestions require some certain “tech” knowledge. If you are not comfortable with it, do not attempt to make changes, specially on “cacheable” items, if you do not know what you are doing. You can always ask someone for help 🙂

  • DiTesco,

    This was great! I tested my site. I have been working on my page speed and had no ideas these areas need to be worked on. It does look like I might need my tech guy to do some of it like you suggest.

    I manage sites for clients. I can use this to improve their sites. It will be a nice little bonus to them. Plus since their sites are fairly new I can keep up on this.

    • Hi Sheila. Sharp eye on using it for clients 😉 They would certainly appreciate to know that you are on top of things 🙂

      And Yes, unfortunately there are some suggestion that are way beyond an average webmaster so unless you know what you are doing, maybe it is wise to seek for help. There are suggestions though that are straight forward and quite easy to fix, e.g., image compression.

  • Hey DiTesco, Thats pretty good information on how to check our page speed… whats a good score out of 100?

    I’ve been reading the comments above, isn’t it a comprehensive tool that provides all info? or is there somethign better out there

    • HI Sandeep. To answer your questions…

      What is a good score?
      I would say that 75 is a good start, although that may not be enough if you compare yourself to your competitors. Here is something you an do. Select some sites that you think are fast. Do a search for your competitors for example and test all of their speeds. Put the result on a spreadsheet. Do this for say 10 or 15 and then take the average. That should be a good indication 🙂

      Comprehensive?
      Yes and No. It all depends on what Google suggests. Some are quite “techy” and I don’t think that it is an easy thing to address if you are not “tech” savvy. Some are relatively easy..

      Other Tools?
      First this is free, so I compare it with free tools. There are a lot of tools out there that test speed and provide some insights. One that I use often is Pingdom dot com. It really is good to test for speed and you just look at which “call” is taking too much time and fix it. Also great to “locate” broken links.

      This tool however gives a heads up on what Google thinks about your site and that is important because after all, they are the dominant force in search and they are the ones that most of us concentrate our efforts on when optimizing.

      Hope that helps a little to shed some light…

  • I’ve used this over the past couple of days and got my site to around 79-83 after tweaking some of the header code. Anything more than this and i don’t know how much geekier I can get.

    • LOL.. Yeah, I hear you. the more we try to tweak something, the closer it is for us to get a “geek” award of the year 🙂 Nonetheless, if you were able to improve your score with some suggestions they have provided, that is already good. 79-83 looks good and maybe most of the “other” items they suggest are to “minify” some settings, which unless you want to get “geekier”, I suggest not to do it without proper knowledge. Thanks for stopping by

  • Nice news.. tested my site. and i sincrely need to work on pages speed..

    • Hi there. Yeah, as if we have nothing else to do, now we have to tackle this problem too, lol. Good luck with your improvements. All the best

  • Hey DiTesco, I tested my blog and all I can say is I have a lot of work to do. I guess it’s Google’s turn to steal the show again this week. Look for Facebook to come up with something to make our heads spin one day real soon….LOL!

    Thanks!

    • Hi Ileane. I see that your score is 63 (just ran it now) and it so seems that there are some things you can do to improve this. Having seen your high priorities, it is suggesting “enable keep alive”. If you notice though, most of them relate to “outside” resources and I am not sure how to tackle that. Hmmm, definitely something I would have o research upon and see what can be done. Hopefully many are reading this and would give us some light on this “Keep Alive” thing.

      And Yeah, I hear you. Every week someone comes up with something to make a “show”. I am sure that FB, will be announcing something son 🙂

  • Interesting, 70 outa 100; apparently good. I had no high priority, 2 medium, one being to optimize images…I don’t have any. lol And 7 low priority that I do not understand, those will be going to my design outsource.

    Nice find man!

    • Hi Dennis. That0s great, no high priority is awesome. As for the images, I did a test on your site and Google is pointing to images that you “apparently” don’t have but they are there. If you hit the images suggestions and click on the links, you will. Example is a “star” png file that I actually do not see in your site. Interesting…

      • Exactly, now what am I supposed to to with that? lol

        Btw, don’t be too impressed. It’s a brand new theme barely filled in…for instance, I actually have 2 double sidebars on either side…so nothing there to give me high priorities yet. lol

  • Well, of course it can because it presents you with the facts of why your page loads slowly and from there on, you have to try and find solutions to those problems, they even give you some general answers.

    But, I honestly don’t understand Google’s crave for speed, now when broadband internet is become available worldwide, Google wants to optimize websites for lower loading times?

    Also, doesn’t yahoo do the same, with their plugin (for mozilla?) the only difference is that they don’t offer your a web based version. So nothing new or innovative here (oh, what about pingdom?)

    • Hi Alex. Re: Pingdom, I think it is a good tool (see response to @sandeep). As for the innovation in itself, I agree, it is not really new as this was already available via GWT, but with a difference. It is easier to test any website with this tool without having to setup accounts or anything. Sort of a “fly by” tool…

      In a nutshell, I think that Google’s crave for speed is to provide a better experience for the user. While there are broadband connections out there, most of the time a website still loads very slow due to a number of factors. Example are “non optimized” images, too many external JS calls, etc..

  • My site get 87 scores/100, it looks like I have to use another wordpress theme to improve the performance. I’m not good in coding 🙁

    • Hi Juno. If I were you, I would not be so concerned about getting anything done, unless you feel it that way. 87 score is great and maybe if change anything it could end up getting worst. Be on the look out and test you score once or twice every week and see hope it develops. Then decide

      • Thank for your suggest. I’ve just changed the theme to Genesis framework instead of using Thesis. I hope it isn’t a wrong decision!

  • Don’t know how I missed this one DiTesco. Great post!

    It’s great they’ve finally come out with this tool considering WSO hold so much weight now.

    By the way, that idea of Website Speed Optimization services is fantastic! Hmmm…. think many techy people will now be adding this to the service repertoire. I like how you think. 😉

    Thanks!

    • Well, I understand why you missed this one out Michele 🙂 And now you see why I like having ventures with you, haha. You have a very sharp eye for things, ya know… WSO 😉

  • Its good informative blog.I agree Google is a Best online Web master.Because its speed performance is fantastic than other web masters.Google has been constantly “pushing” hard over the performance of the web and as you all now, page speed is now an important ranking factor.

  • It is really a good tool for webmasters man,i like it.

    • Glad you like it. It really is good, if you know what you are doing. Just be careful when doing changes and remember to backup all of your site before attempting to make any changes specially on minifying. Thanks for stopping by

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