Google PageSpeed Insights

Google PageSpeed Insights

Are you one of those who work hard to speed optimize your website to achieve a score of 100/100? Then you're not alone. Many website owners are working to achieve the highest possible PageSpeed. Google PageSpeed Insights is without a doubt one of the most useful and widely used tools for webmasters, developers and website owners alike.

Google pageSpeed Insights is a program that gives you insight into how fast your website is loading. It does this by measuring the speed and then presenting you with a score between 0 to 100 to indicate how fast the speed is.

Nevertheless, it is a mistake that many try to achieve a score of 100/100. This is not how Google PageSpeed should be used. Despite the importance of Google PageSpeed Insights, you should not spend all your time trying to achieve a 100/100 score, as in most cases this will mean shifting focus from other tasks that could have yielded greater significant benefits.

Google PageSpeed Insights should therefore not be considered the only truth, but a good indication of how your website is performing. In this article, you will get to know Google PageSpeed Insights better so that you understand how the program's score works and what exactly it measures.

How Google Pagespeed Insights works

Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) measures the performance of a page on both mobile and desktop devices, and then suggests improvements. Google PageSpeed Insights is powered by Lighthouse since the end of 2018. This means the results in your PSI reports are based on the Lighthouse API.

When you scan a page, PageSpeed delivers two types of data: lab and field data. Lab data is collected in a controlled environment, i.e. with a set of predefined devices and network settings. It is effective at correcting errors that affect performance, and its tests can be easily repeated. Field data is based on real Chrome user experiences over the last 30 days: it includes First Contentful Paint (FCP) and First Input Delay (FID).

How do I achieve an optimal speed?

Based on how fast your page is on your website, Google PageSpeed Insights gives you a score from 0 - 100 based on how fast your page loads. A score below 50 means that the loading time is too slow, a score between 50 - 89 is okay but also means that there is room for improvement and a score of 90 or above means that the loading time is good.

However, you should be aware that your performance score may change from each time that you test the speed of your page. There may be several reasons for this, but we recommend that you do not stress too much about your score. If your score is 85, you are already well on your way.

However, it is important to bear in mind that the slower your website's loading time is, the more likely it is that users will leave your site. Google conducted a study to determine how long users spent on a website before leaving due to slow loading time. The study showed that if the website had a loading time of 7 seconds or more, the user left.

With this conclusion, you can start testing how long it takes to load your website. But as previously pointed out. Don't stress about the score as it is only indicative.

How do I get a score of 100/100?

If you have a score of 100 out of 100, you have nothing to do as this is the most optimal score. We have pointed out that it is not a necessity to have a score of 100 out of 100, but if you absolutely want to try to reach this goal we recommend that you follow these three steps.

• Check the loading speed. Before you do anything, check whether the loading speed of your website is slow. If so, do a speed test in Google PageSpeed Insights to check your speed score, which can give you an insight into how much work you need to put into improving load times. However, as explained earlier, the speed score is only indicative.
• Compress your images. Large images are often one of the reasons why websites are slow to load. We recommend that image files are under 200KB, as anything over that can have an effect on loading speed.
• Optimize the speed of mobiles. Over 60% of Google searches are made on mobiles. So it's important to check load speeds on mobile devices too. At Google PageSpeed Insight, you can test mobile load speed.

How is the Google PageSpeed Insight Score calculated?

When you ask Google PageSpeed Insights to analyse a page, it returns various sections and indicators about the page's performance. PageSpeed results, as mentioned earlier, are driven by the Lighthouse API, and the score is no exception. The speed rating you see at the top of your PageSpeed report is based on lab data analyzed by Lighthouse.

Thus, it is important to note that the result is the result of the simulation Lighthouse makes of a page load on a particular device.

Google clarifies that only the elements in the "Metrics" section of Lighthouse's Performance category contribute to the score.

The recommendations shown under "Diagnostics and Opportunities" are not part of the score. The score is measured by 6 metrics:

• First Contentful Paint(FCP)
• Time to Interactive
• Speed Index
• Largest Contentful Paint
• Total Blocking Time (TBT)
• Cumulative Layout Shift

Google PageSpeed Insight Frequently Asked Questions