I Don't Think I Trust Page Speed Insights Anymore

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4.2K followers

It's been a while since I checked my page speed. I just kind of take it for granted now. Funny how quickly we become accustomed to something. I decided to check it though, just to see what the numbers were like.

I've gone from 97 to 63, supposedly. Even pages where I haven't changed or added anything now show a big drop in speed. I don't trust that though, because any time I visit my site, I can't see any difference in speed. I'm not sure if it's not measuring correctly, or what. I'm not going to stress out about it, given that I can't perceive any slow-down, but I hope I won't have issues later on.

Any other compulsive speed-checkers getting odd results?

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Recent Comments

41

Yes I hope so

Yes, my speed seems to be dropping consistently without having done anything to the site. Odd

How do you find it when you actually visit the site though? Other people, like myself, are finding that the speed seems the same, despite the numbers.

The same thing has happened to me, I don't get it.

Using the Google Page speed checker. One week ago, my desktop speed was last 92, and my mobile speed was 81. Already not so great.

Today its worse. Desktop speed = 85; Mobile speed = 68
@&%!/!!!

I have no idea why, because I have not added any new images or any content to the site since I last checked.

Strange. But if you actually visit the page how is it performing?

Actually its performing the same as before based on what I can see.

It's almost definitely the size of your images. Google puts a heavy emphasis on page size and images will take up 95% of your site's size. It's most likely gone down because you have published a new post with unoptimized images. Fix the errors they give you. They tell you exactly what's wrong with your site. There's no reason not to trust Google.

I have a long history of avoiding image use. Ha ha. I don't have much in the way of images, but it's true that I have used some recently. I guess I put too much faith in EWWW, which is supposed to optimise images for you...

I use TinyPNG.com to reduce my images and I will do a comparison between PNG and JPG to see which is smaller.

Yes Steve they tell you what is wrong. They may as well write it in Swahili, I might have a better chance of understanding it. I'm lucky my site speed is good, otherwise I'd be going up the wall.

It doesn't take much to figure it out. Almost everything in there can be learned with a day's effort. It shouldn't be ignored or deemed untrustworthy because it's not understood.

I don't want what I wrote to be misconstrued as not trusting Google. I know I used the word "trust" but I am essentially saying that I have to wonder if something happened to make it less accurate. Things happen sometimes. It's telling me that I am slowing down, but I am not really seeing evidence of that, so that makes me not "trust" their numbers at the moment.

What's your URL? I'd be happy to take a look at the Insights for you.

My site is geekoutwithdad.com
My results vary, depending on the page.

The logo you uploaded in May is being deemed too large and I guarantee you if you replace it with a compressed version, your score will shoot right up.

Google provides you with compressed versions of your images directly on that page. Click on the link at the bottom: http://take.ms/HxxhO and download the compressed version of your logo and replace it and your score will greatly improve. Right now your homepage is 66 Mobile and 79 Desktop. Let me know after you replace the logo as I bet that really quick and easy fix will shoot your score up.

Yes that helped. Some pages are still a bit slower and my mobile scores are still yellow.

As mentioned though, everything still seems as fast as it ever was... I supposed that "slow" is relative, though. If a green score is loading almost instantly and a yellow one takes 1.5 seconds, I am not likely to notice that the way their analysis might.

Thanks!

Your site speed is fine. GPSI doesn't actually measure speed. It scans your site and gives you a list of things that "might" cause page load issues, and then offers a list of suggestions & recommendations. I've stripped my site of all my photos, plugins, & logos as an experiment, and my site was still in the high 80s (Desktop) and high 60s (mobile). Even my "privacy policy" page, which has only "text" displayed on it, is scored in the mid 80s for desktop and mobile. WTF?? Removing all the functionality from your site is not worth a small bump in "projected" page speed. Heck, even most of Wealthy Affiliate's pages are in the "yellow" for desktop, and "red" for mobile, but it loads pretty fast on all devices. If your site loads reasonably fast, but GPSI grades you mostly in the yellow, then I wouldn't pull my hair out about it anymore. Wealthy Affiliate's "Site Speed" "IS" working. You're fine.

What is speed all about? WA will take care all of these as the Web Host unless any application can solve issues outside WA. I don't know if I'm thinking right.

From my experience, if you check it a second time after refreshing the page, it'll give you the correct result (97/100 in your case).

Usually, yes. In the past that was always the case, but it is not doing that now.

I see. That's odd....

Do you have a plugin to increase side speed? Maybe there was an update to the plugin that improved the speed?

There is only the one that WA rolled out a few weeks ago. Initially, my speed had gone up to about 97 on most of my pages. Now it is showing considerably slower, though on my end it seemed as if the pages were as fast as always, so it seemed a bit odd.

As mentioned by Halinphilly, it might be fast for me due to being cached. I'll have to clear it and see what happens.

I have been noticing this as well and was wondering but Hal just cleared it up below, so I am so glad you asked!!

After I add a post or update takes a day to show right again.

Randy

Your pages may be cached. This means they'll loaf a lot faster on ypur computer. If you've cleared your cache and opened up your browser in private mode, then disregard this message :-)

Hmm. True. I went incognito, but forgot about clearing my cache.

Just cleared my cache and went incognito. My site still loads for me instantaneously and snaps between pages with no discernable load time.

After clearing your cache, is PageSpeed still showing 63?

Yes. It's weird, but given that the performance is still good I'm not going to worry about it.

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