How seriously should we take PAGE SPEED?

25 replies
Hello everyone.
I would like to share some thoughts and hopefully start a discussion about a topic all of us should be interested in and straight forward answers are not to be found.

How seriously should we take PAGE SPEED?

My story began when google added their new little widget to adsense which tells you what you need to improve to earn more money.
Before that - I didn't even know what score my sites got with google's page speed test tool...

When I saw that some of my pages (according to adsense) get a low page speed score I started getting obsessed with he whole thing, installing cash plugins, picture minifier plugin and so on... trying to get my speed score as high as possible.

I did get it up from about 80 to about 89 and felt very good about it.

I was thinking about maybe changing my wp theme to get it even higher but found it really hard to locate a theme which is responsive, supports languages AND I have some kind of reason to believe it will improve my page speed score even more.

While I was thinking about it I saw that google upgraded their test site speed tool (I was using gmetrix all this time) so I re-tested my websites and guess what?
Not only that now they have also a mobile speed test in which I get a score of 50/100, also my desktop results got down by 5%.

So now my score is not that good (again) plus I have this mobile thing to take care of and I don't know how to...

I started thinking to myself - maybe I'm taking this whole thing too seriously?
I don't even know what's considered to be a high score! Maybe 90/100 is as good as it gets?
And what implications does it have (if at all) on my traffic and revenues?

So I started analyzing some big famous websites with google's tool and I was very surprised from the results:


Amazon.com
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mobile: 75/100
desktop: 89/100


Cnn.com
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mobile: 66/100
desktop: 61/100


Gmail.com
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mobile: 64/100
desktop: 85/100


Facebook.com
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mobile: error
desktop: 79/100


So... what score should I strive for then? If on mobile even gmail.com gets a 64 score, then here's my first question again:

How seriously should we take PAGE SPEED?


Any insights, thought and brainstorming discussions would be appreciated! :-)
#page #page speed #site speed #speed
  • Profile picture of the author Spencer Jones
    Very interesting insights. I am also in the midst of wanting to implement page speed seriously. Would love to read what everyone else is doing with page speed...

    BTW: If google is recommending something, you better be serious about it. Having a faster loading site, helps retain visitors which in turn helps you rank high in Google. Everything seems to be revolving around all the next generation changes Google are implementing to their search algorithms.

    Dr.Spencer Jones
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    • Profile picture of the author tjaysen70
      yeah its important to get a high page speed score, for obvious reasons, eh. I mean look around anywhere that has a bunch of people, like an airport, and watch how many people are on their smart phones. Everyone has a smart phone these days. So do you think page speed matters, and that google values those scores?
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by Spencer Jones View Post

      Very interesting insights. I am also in the midst of wanting to implement page speed seriously. Would love to read what everyone else is doing with page speed...

      BTW: If google is recommending something, you better be serious about it. Having a faster loading site, helps retain visitors which in turn helps you rank high in Google. Everything seems to be revolving around all the next generation changes Google are implementing to their search algorithms.

      Dr.Spencer Jones
      So...what score should we strive for?
      Is 85 good enough? facebook and cnn are below this score...
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by Spencer Jones View Post

      BTW: If google is recommending something, you better be serious about it.

      Dr.Spencer Jones

      What if I told you that google recommends me to use their recommended ad sizes in adsense and actually one of their un-recommended ads (which brings a warning in adsense) is making me 5 times more money than any of their recommended ones?
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  • Profile picture of the author ronrule
    This is one of those questions that you can answer by thinking about you own browsing behavior objectively - page speed is directly tied to bounce rates, and the impact is even more important on mobile devices.

    Ever been looking up a product, but the page was so slow you couldn't take it anymore and hit your back button to go find the same product on a different site? You probably have - and so have millions of other people.

    It wouldn't surprise me at all if Google was now considering this a more important variable. It makes sense from a lot of angles... Google makes their money by displaying ads on content, and they get the traffic that enables them to do that by giving visitors what they want. If the site performance is low and the visitor clicks their back button, Google (1) didn't give the user what they wanted, and (2) wasn't able to monetize the user because they never gave the page a chance to load.
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by ronrule View Post

      This is one of those questions that you can answer by thinking about you own browsing behavior objectively - page speed is directly tied to bounce rates, and the impact is even more important on mobile devices.

      Ever been looking up a product, but the page was so slow you couldn't take it anymore and hit your back button to go find the same product on a different site? You probably have - and so have millions of other people.
      --
      I'm not that sure that page speed is that directly tied to bounce rates.
      Did you know that if a user entered your article, read it for 3 hours and found great value in it and then just clicked the back button or browsed out of your website -it's considered a bounce?
      A few years back a bounce was if a user left the page after less than 8 seconds, but not now...
      Actually even regardless of that - you page speed score does not reflect how fast the page has loaded but reflects how fast it loaded CONSIDERING the stuff that can be done about it.
      There can be found instances of pages that loaded within 5 seconds and got a better score than other pages which loaded within 4 seconds...
      What I'm trying to say is if I'm thinking about my browsing behavior objectively - I'm actually pretty patient and I open most of the pages that I open in a new tab anyway.
      I open the link in a new tab and keep on searching, then I get to the page later and it makes no matter to me if it took 3, 5 or even 35 seconds to load...
      --
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      • Profile picture of the author ronrule
        Originally Posted by mmmyway View Post

        --
        I'm not that sure that page speed is that directly tied to bounce rates.
        Did you know that if a user entered your article, read it for 3 hours and found great value in it and then just clicked the back button or browsed out of your website -it's considered a bounce?
        A few years back a bounce was if a user left the page after less than 8 seconds, but not now...
        Actually even regardless of that - you page speed score does not reflect how fast the page has loaded but reflects how fast it loaded CONSIDERING the stuff that can be done about it.
        There can be found instances of pages that loaded within 5 seconds and got a better score than other pages which loaded within 4 seconds...
        What I'm trying to say is if I'm thinking about my browsing behavior objectively - I'm actually pretty patient and I open most of the pages that I open in a new tab anyway.
        I open the link in a new tab and keep on searching, then I get to the page later and it makes no matter to me if it took 3, 5 or even 35 seconds to load...
        --
        You're opening pages in tabs on mobile devices? I don't have the hand coordination to switch around when I'm doing that - on my desktop I'll have no less than 12 or 13 tabs open at any given time, but on mobile it's a one at a time thing, lol.

        But you bring up an interesting point, the difference between consumption and engagement and desktop vs mobile. If the user is just "consuming content" with no call to action or engagement required, speed is less important. If someone wants to read an article, they'll wait for it to load. But for pages that are interactive and engaging the user, such as selling a product or requiring touch/click interaction, speed is important - and users will quickly get frustrated and leave if it isn't responding. Especially on mobile devices.
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by ronrule View Post

      This is one of those questions that you can answer by thinking about you own browsing behavior objectively - page speed is directly tied to bounce rates, and the impact is even more important on mobile devices.
      Matt Cutts said himself that bounce rate are not a factor in ranking...
      Matt Cutts: Google Doesn’t Use Bounce Rate | WebProNews
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      • Profile picture of the author DABK
        Yes, but your visitors/prospects don't know what Matt says and they'll click away from your page if it takes too long. Too long is subjective... But it seems to be 3 seconds or less... On mobile devices, that's easily exceeded.

        As regards to how seriously you take my friend Matt, keep in mind he also says, you should create a site, write some good content, and people will naturally link to your site.

        Originally Posted by mmmyway View Post

        Matt Cutts said himself that bounce rate are not a factor in ranking...
        Matt Cutts: Google Doesn't Use Bounce Rate | WebProNews
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  • Profile picture of the author thatjc
    Answer: VERY SERIOUSLY, since Google makes load speed a part of their "Quality Score".

    I use the page load text at: Website speed test
    for all my pages (at least the main pages) and try for 3 seconds or less. Be sure to test from the same city each time. I usually average 3 - 5 tests for each page.

    For WordPress, I've found that the "Use Google Libraries" plugin speeds up WordPress pages quite a lot.

    If your WordPress pages load slowly, suspect a poorly written plugin. Page load speed is one more reason to keep your number of WordPress plugins under control.

    Hope this helps...
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by thatjc View Post

      Answer: VERY SERIOUSLY, since Google makes load speed a part of their "Quality Score".

      I use the page load text at: Website speed test
      for all my pages (at least the main pages) and try for 3 seconds or less. Be sure to test from the same city each time. I usually average 3 - 5 tests for each page.

      For WordPress, I've found that the "Use Google Libraries" plugin speeds up WordPress pages quite a lot.

      If your WordPress pages load slowly, suspect a poorly written plugin. Page load speed is one more reason to keep your number of WordPress plugins under control.

      Hope this helps...
      It does help! Thank you :-)
      But...
      What is the factor that matters? page speed or page speed SCORE?
      Iv'e managed before to get my score 5 points higher with the page speed actually staying the same...just fixed some caching errors and that did it...
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  • Profile picture of the author f5mtadas
    statistically people from google if the page don't start loads up fast in 3 second, they leave the page, so hosting is very important.
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  • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
    It's important. Mobile browsers need better response time for obvious reasons.

    I finally got a 99 PageSpeed score today. It took three days and I'm an experienced Linux System Administrator with 15 years of experience. Using Amazon Web Services and CloudFront it was a real pain. Truth be told, the average person without admin access is going to have a hard time getting that speed. Memcache and PHP APC have to be configured, along with Gzip compression, page compression, optimization for the CDN, mod_expires yadda yadda yadda.
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by PerformanceMan View Post

      It's important. Mobile browsers need better response time for obvious reasons.

      I finally got a 99 PageSpeed score today. It took three days and I'm an experienced Linux System Administrator with 15 years of experience. Using Amazon Web Services and CloudFront it was a real pain. Truth be told, the average person without admin access is going to have a hard time getting that speed. Memcache and PHP APC have to be configured, along with Gzip compression, page compression, optimization for the CDN, mod_expires yadda yadda yadda.
      I am VERY interested in hearing why (or if?) it was worth your work...
      Do you expect to see better ranking or even more straight to the point - better conversions?
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      • Profile picture of the author PerformanceMan
        Originally Posted by mmmyway View Post

        I am VERY interested in hearing why (or if?) it was worth your work...
        Do you expect to see better ranking or even more straight to the point - better conversions?
        I have no idea. I just finished up this morning
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  • Profile picture of the author thatjc
    Sorry Mmmyway, I don't know the mathematical relationship between measuring page load speed as a percent (as in your post) versus in seconds. I always measure in seconds, using the tool I linked to.

    If the AdSense ads you're referring to are images, you might be able to compress them more in Photoshop or the free GIMP and improve their load speed. One of the things I love about that Pingdom page load speed test is that it shows you how long EACH element of your page load process takes - including each image. That means you can track down any overly fat images (in file size) and re-size and/or re-compress them in your photo editor program.

    Cheers!
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  • Profile picture of the author thedanbrown
    Thanks for the research i find that interesting... i know page speed is definitely important on sales pages or any marketing pages of any kind including content pages. Definitely curious to hear about the proper metrics though for this. I think Google takes it into account also for SEO reasons
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  • Profile picture of the author Randall Magwood
    I say page speed is a major factor. It goes overlooked when creating tiny little squeeze pages, and 1-page sales letter sites.... but if you own a site that has 1,000+ pages on it and is image intensive... load speed is a major factor. JPEG images load pretty fast, but the quality isn't always there. I routinely use PNG images on my sites, and i bury my images down towards the middle of end of my sales pages.
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by Randall Magwood View Post

      I say page speed is a major factor. It goes overlooked when creating tiny little squeeze pages, and 1-page sales letter sites.... but if you own a site that has 1,000+ pages on it and is image intensive... load speed is a major factor. JPEG images load pretty fast, but the quality isn't always there. I routinely use PNG images on my sites, and i bury my images down towards the middle of end of my sales pages.
      Thanks for your insights!
      I don't know about other people, but personally I have no doubt that page speed matters and of course one should do his best to make his pages load as fast as possible. That's just common sense...
      What I was more interested in is page speed SCORE.

      When you run the test you get a lot of suggestions about how to improve your score, some of them easy to implement, some are very time consuming and require understanding of servers and code.

      One can either ignore the complicated stuff, or use plugins to cover some of them and/or the help of a professional to optimize his page speed to the maximum. Those things cost time and money. Are they worth the investment?
      If my score is below 90 I get 4/5 green dots in google adsense under site health / page seed performance.
      If it's below 80 (I'm not 100% sure about that) it's already 3/5.

      So...how seriously should we take THAT?
      If some of the biggest and most professional sites online are below 90 and some even below 80 - does it make sense to pay a professional to optimize my site or even work on it on my own for 50 hours, just to get my score higher than 89 for example?

      And what about mobile speed?
      Should I even try to get a better score than say....70?
      I'm not using a mobile phone to browse the internet and my experience with mobile browsing is almost zero.
      Can anybody do us a favor and post mobile page speed scores (using google's tool) for 5 of the best mobile sites he knows?

      Personally - I couldn't really find ANY website which get a high score in mobile speed... Maybe I'm not testing the right ones?
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  • Profile picture of the author thatjc
    Jpeg is usually the most efficient form of compression. It almost always makes smaller files than PNG or even decent-looking GIF. And sometimes PNG 8 bit is not so good - forcing you to even larger PNG 24 bit images.

    Adobe Photoshop has the best image compressors I've experienced. With it, a compression of even 50% or 60% can look good - if you started with a decent PSD file and depending on the particulars of the image.

    I don't use the free GIMP that much, but I suspect it also has excellent image compression.

    Usually my approximately 300 pixel wide x 400 pixel high images come in under 30 KB - sometimes smaller. I recommend always trying to stay under 40 KB to 60 KB, even for larger images.

    I have a tutorial with image examples here
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  • Profile picture of the author website design
    People are impatient and it's been proven that the majority of visitors leave a site if it doesn't load in a couple seconds. Every second you make someone wait you will lose xx% of the traffic. It's really easy to fix with most websites and well worth the effort.

    Page score tools such as Pingdom and google pagespeed are a great start to find the big issues... once you get down to 1-3 second page load times then the rest doesn't matter much. Going from a 90% to a 98% score won't matter much as long as your page loads in a couple seconds.
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    • Profile picture of the author mmmyway
      Originally Posted by website design View Post


      Page score tools such as Pingdom and google pagespeed are a great start to find the big issues... once you get down to 1-3 second page load times then the rest doesn't matter much. Going from a 90% to a 98% score won't matter much as long as your page loads in a couple seconds.
      are you talking user wise or google wise?
      you can have a page with a score of even 80 or less which loads within 3 seconds.
      you WILL get a warning in adsense about it and I'm not sure if it will or will not affect your ranking...
      if your'e asking me - from the user's point of view the difference between a page that loads within 3 seconds and one that loads within 4-5 seconds is barely something one can notice... but what about google? if they raise an alert in adsense - does it mean I have to take the alert seriously?
      cnn and facebook don't seem to....their score is below 80....
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  • Profile picture of the author Eternal
    Read a study that page loading time can make or break you by about 60%. Was an article by buffer but I cannot find it.
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  • Profile picture of the author DubDubDubDot
    I'm convinced that Google talks about our load times being of importance for their own benefit. They cache the entire internet. The faster your sites, the less resources they must dedicate to that task. 747's can fit in their data centers as it is.
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  • Profile picture of the author sethriley
    The faster the better, but there comes a point when you have to start taking away your content and/or features to get the results you want. So a good balance between the to would be ideal in my mind.
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