The Google PageSpeed Insights Code Has Been Cracked
Website speed is becoming more important as time goes on. As sites get more sophisticated, more database driven, use higher quality graphics, videos and other media, and as people use platforms like Wordpress that are fairly intensive in terms of loading speeds, speed suffers. As a result, Google PageSpeed Results tends to suffer as well.
I want to tell you today that we have been working diligently behind the scenes to fix all of these website speed issues through some sophisticated technology that we have spent the last 9 months works on.
When you go over and test your site on Google PageSpeed Insights, conventionally speaking a score of 70+ is pretty good. Any SiteSpeed over 80 is excellent, and anything that cracks into the 90s is honestly unheard-of.
The website speed of your site is definitely one of the ranking factors in Google. Your speed impacts the user experience and if you have a slow loading website, you are going to move down the SERPs in Google and other search engines.
Well, I want to show you some evidence of what we are working on in terms of SiteSpeed. This is going to blow your mind and our new technology is being run as a beta on a few websites, one of them being my WaysToAvoidScams website.
Here is the page on my website that I tested.
WaysToAvoidScamsOnline.com Google PageSpeed Test
Have a Peek of these Mobile and Desktop PageSpeeds.
A few stats and details you should know about this particular post. It is far from being a normal post, it is HUGE.
- This is a wordpress website.
- There are 7 plugins that are actively running on my website. There are 69,783 words on this page.
- There are 651 comments on this page (all load with no paging)
- There are 661 images within this post.
- The proof is in the puddin’ though.
This page, which on paper would seem rather intensive of server resources, achieved an incredible 96/100 PageSpeed rating for mobile and a 97/100 PageSpeed rating for desktop. These numbers are NOT normal, but are going to be very much normal for folks hosting their websites on the state of the art platform at Wealthy Affiliate... very soon.
Google Page Speed Ranking Factors
Google is looking at several aspects of your website when determining the overall SPEED criteria. As the world moves mobile and as we as users demand more and more efficiency, there is absolutely no reason that a page should load slow enough to annoy an end user.
That is Google's logic anyways and that is why they have moved to a state where they provide you feedback with your websites pagespeed and the overall performance based on their metrics that make it different.
- Image Optimization. Large image files can truly slow down your website. If you are not already using image compression on your website, I highly recommend that you install a plugin that will help you with this. There are two that are favor over the rest, these are EWWW Image Optimizer and Smush It. But high quality plugins for image compression which will make your website pages load a lot faster.
- Proper Javascript Optimization. If your JS, something that is native to Wordpress, loads above the fold of your page or in your header, it can slow down your sites performance, in particular on mobile devices. Google does not like this and natively to Wordpress, it is very difficult to manage this in a way that can improve your overall website speed. There are solution for this though that we have uncovered and you can see them from our preliminary tests (they have been completely resolved).
- Caching. Ideally you have proper caching on your website. There are many plugins that you can use within Wordpress for this, but they are all very much ineffective when it comes to proper caching. What caching does is it serves your website in HTML for your audience so that it loads instantly (as WP sites are database intensive to load the page from the database every time). This optimizes your website drastically, but plugins are not the solution for this. Something that is done more on the server (hosting) level has a much more profound impact versus using a plugin.
- Website/Server Load Speeds. If your site is loading slow, not only will you get an abundane of other issues, but if your overall server response time is slow, then you are going to get notified (and sometimes the PageSpeed Insights test won't even run).
- Mobile vs. Desktop. There are different things that Google looks for on Mobile and Desktop. Caching is very important within both, as is your website being responsive in nature (which almost all wordpress websites are by default these days). You ideally want high Mobile and Desktop ratings, if you are not achieving over 80 in both areas your website needs some work.
Other Speed Tests Are USELESS.
I know that many people here use PingDom and GTMetrix (along with various other tools) to test your website performance. Although these tools may seem like they are doing a lot of work, they are very intensive on your website (can actually) and many major networks have blocked sites like GTMetrix from even running on them.
So don't use them. Don't trust their data. And don't base any decision or the actual website speed of your site on the data that these tools provide. It is completely erroneous at the best of times.
Another thing is that these tools can put enormous "load" on your website, even potentially taking it down altogether. Because of this, many hosting companies will completely block these services from being used.
The HUMAN Website Speed Test.
Many people get so fixated on speed tests and their analysis of a websites performance through tools, which are analyzing things that may be loading in the background, but it is not visible to the human eye. One of the best tests you can do with your website is to visit it yourself.
The quicker your website loads, the better the experience for your audience. Many analyses have indicated that if your website loads in 4 seconds or greater, you lose 25%+ of your traffic right away (they simply leave).
If you can keep it to under 2 seconds, this goes down to less than 10. Under 1 second, abandonment is no existent, other than robots and click monkeys that may be visiting your sites.
If you visit my site and navigate through the pages, you will see how quickly it "snaps" in terms of the page load speeds. This is because I am running some new technology behind the scenes (and something that we have rolling out soon), that properly handles speeds and properly caches websites on a hardware level.
Why hardware level though? Don't plugins (which rely on the software level coding) work well?
Wordpress Website Caching Plugins Aren't the Best.
Caching is important. Caching plugins are not the solution to the caching problem though because their reliance on the Wordpress architecture to operate (which is natively slow). Some caching plugins out there work fairly well, but any plugin that is worthwhile is typically a paid service or a paid upgrade ($39+ per website) and they are still operating on the "software" level which is much slower than operating on a server (hardware) level.
And for it to be effective, they need to work with an external service like Cloud Fare which is intended to absorb DDOS and malignant attacks on your website where traffic is driven to your website (automatically) in attempt to take down your site.
If you have a caching plugin alone, this will not prevent this from happening as this needs to take place on the "hardware" level, not software.
Technology Can Make Your Life as a Marketer Better.
Imagine not having to worry about any of this stuff. You set up your website and it just works. It meets Google's highest standards in terms of PageSpeed Insights and your websites not only load lightening quick for your audience (the main goal), but they also achieve high ratings in PageSpeed. As in, 90+.
That is going to be your new reality very soon, it is the reality that I get to experience on all my sites because I am one of the lucky folks that have been selected for Beta testing with a brand new SPEED platform that is coming to the SiteRubix website and hosting network. It's brilliant. I have many pages that are getting 99 on both mobile and desktop, some even reaching 100/100 score.
Scores like that cannot be beat.
Not to mention load times and the navigation experience to the visitors on your website. When someone visits your website, they content should load immediately. As per mentioned earlier, if someone is having to wait over 2 seconds for a page to load, the fall off rate is very high. If they wait over 4 seconds, you are losing a huge chunk of your potential audience (and revenue).
Website speed matters. It will lead to a better overall experience, better rankings in Google, more traffic and more revenue.
We are onto some significant and game changing speed updates within the hosting network here at Wealthy Affiliate. Stuff that is simply not being done in the hosting world...anywhere. Big things are stirring under the engine at Wealthy Affiliate.
Recent Comments
411
That's funny I just sent you a report just this morning about a half hour ago regarding this same exact issue with my site and it said to share the report with my webmaster. My over all is a 95% and it loads very fast so I am not sure about the report that I am receiving.
Hi, Kyle, tried Google Page Speed Insights. Desktop shows 84/100, Mobile 65/100, but don't seem able to improve on those speeds whatever I do about JavaScript and CSS, so looking forwards to the new SPEED Platform.
Looks like you, Carson, and the backroom boys (and girls) have done it again, keeping WA on step ahead of the pack, thank you.
Yeah, you are going to love these updates then Brian. You are going to see your SiteSpeed improve drastically and your overall website speed. We do the hard work from a technical standpoint so you can focus on things that truly matter!
Super, super awesome, Kyle!!! Doing practically anything, hardware vs. software, will quickly move hardware to the forefront. When you buy a pc or laptop, if you'll notice it will give you a cache size (128, 256, 512, 1024 megabytes, for example) and that cache is a piece of hardware on the motherboard and it will serve up data in what seems like a instant compared to a software-driven cache.
Coupling that with image and javascript optimization and suddenly it's mind-blowing!
To see/hear you guys about to put hardware caching into place on the WA host servers is nothing short of nuclear. Can't wait to read that it's implemented and at our disposal!!!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Mike
We are definitely going nuclear on the hosting industry, the framework in which websites are hosted here is unparalleled in the Managed Wordpress industry and it is only going to more and more advanced as time goes on.
We are excited for this roll out, one of the bigger moves in what has been a stale hosting industry for too long.
Dang Kyle waystoavoidscams is an oiled machine, it sure wont hurt the engines. I went to your site itself and started clicking, it's like a speed of lightening. What is wrong with you, how did you figure this out, Lol. OMG! I want that, I have a need for speed!!! :)
Whoosh...it wasn't though prior to this implementation. It dragged along pretty slow actually. You and others are going to get a really good taste for this when this update is rolled out!
This is awesome Kyle, I've installed many plugins on my sites ( pre-WA sites ) trying to get this stuff to work faster. It's been driving me crazy for years.
I joined WA in Feb and moved a few of my old sites over to WA.
When can we expect this to roll out?
Thanks
Hi, Greg.
I know your question was directed to Kyle, but I can answer, in case he doesn't see it.
Above, Kyle said: "The plan is for next week...announcement will be made."
Sharon
Thanks for sharing this wonderful record breaking news with us Kyle!
Just the news we needed to hear to allay our fears with the new Fact Checker that Google has brought out. Knowing that you've proven, tested and tried your new technology, proves it works and nothing can change that and it's NOT fake!
See my blog for more info:
Beware The Fact Checker In Google Is On The Loose! Beware The Fact Checker In Google Is On The Loose!
Great news. I could never get the caching to improve, nor get rid of the Javascript problem. I've Smushed my images and that works really well. I use a database optimiser, and that seems to do a good job. But like you said, there are some things you can fix only at the server. Looking forward to the improvements.
Thank you Kyle for Google PageSpeed Insights I will test my websites also I'm using Smush for Image compression it works well since I have lots of Images And I'm using W3 Total Cache I like the fact of having loading keep it under 2 seconds also keep me upto date with speed platform on SiteRubix website Thanks for your training
Great news Kyle.
As you have already seen recently, my results on Pagespeed both my sites are in the green 99 and 99 and the second one managed to get a higher result from last time which is now 95 and 90 for mobile and desktop respectively.
Apart from the EWWW Image Optimizer which I already have are you able to let me know the other plugins you use on your site?
Would love to test them out so as to reduce the plugins I have.
At the moment I have 21 yet still retained this high score but If I can get the same results or close to without this number of plugins all the better.
Kudos to WA.
Yet again your excellent service you are giving us all here will continue to benefit not only our experience with the many learning materials available but also for improving the type of bread and butter which is our websites.
Wishing WA continued success which already is leaps and bounds above all others.
And like they say "There is more to come"
Thank you
Andre
Hi, Andre.
Please pardon me for butting in, but I was so impressed, I had to!
You have 21 plugins, yet manage to get those amazing scores?! That's astounding! Would you consider creating a training, to teach us how to do that?
I very much like the trainings you've already done: https://my.wealthyaffiliate.com/apache1/training I've bookmarked them and I gave a like to each.
I especially appreciated How to block Referral Spam and Countries within Google Analytics. and left a question for you there.
Sharon
Hi Sharon, thank you for the like here and always on the training you mentioned to which I have replied to your question.
As far as my plugins yes there are actually 22 I thought it was 21. It took a while to get there but as I mentioned in a reply to Kyle if I could reduce the number of plugins and get the same results that would be better.
Another aspect on pagespeed can also be dependent on the theme you have chosen as well.
I have two sites with a different theme and when I tried to use the same one on both and visa versa it didn't work out. Go figure
The theme I use with the higher score is Iconic one which I believe is the same theme Kyle uses.
But before you go changing themes it might be best to wait for this new support WA is bringing first and see how you go with that.
Wishing you great success going forward.
As Always
Namaste
Andre
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This couldn't have came at a better time! I just gave support a link to one of my websites to check it my page was loading slow or if it was on my end.
If WA hosting can take care of all the speed issues on all my sites, that would be an AWESOME feature!
Can't wait to see the difference it makes. Thanks Kyle and Carson for always improving WA!
Charlie
Yeah, this will be a moot issue moving forward. There is still some circumstances where they can be some lag from media that you have added to your website, but overall the speed and the caching of your website is going to fly.
You can test my site if you want to experience the speed.s.