How Google Pagespeed Insights Works

1. How Google Pagespeed Insights Works Nobody enjoys a sluggish website. When a webpage takes too long to load, not only does Google notice, but users are more likely to leave and go to another page that will answer their questions more quickly. Users will leave your website if the page load time is too slow, regardless of how they found you - through organic search, paid advertising, or a referral link. If you want to improve your website speed, for the sake of your users and your overall search ranking, you need to consider Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI). Before understanding the tool, let’s understand what Page Speed is? What is Page Speed? Google defines and measures Page Speed by considering the amount of time taken for the first content to load, and the amount of time taken by the entire website to render. Now granted there are several external factors that can affect these numbers. Load times can be affected by a user's internet connection, a domain's web hosting service, and even cache clearing. However, the developer can optimize a variety of elements, including photos, videos, JavaScript, and more. Because page speed is so important to the user experience, Google takes into account a page's overall performance when deciding whether or not to promote it in the SERPs. Taking the time to optimize your content and code shows Google that you care about providing a high-quality experience for your visitors.

2. What is Google’s PageSpeed Insights (PSI)? PageSpeed Insights is a free performance tool by Google that examines a webpage's content and calculates page speed scores for both mobile and desktop versions. The tool also identifies areas where improvements might be made and gives precise recommendations. Page Speed Insights can be utilized by a business owner to understand a few important details about their websites Improving Google Ranking: Scores provided by Page Speed Insights are dependent on Core Web Vitals which Google uses as a part of the ranking algorithm. Hence, we can consider Page Speed Insights to understand whether a website is measuring up to Google standards. Improving Website UX: Performance and speed have a direct impact on the overall experience of a user. For Desktop and Mobile Page Load speed is considered the most important factor. A one-to-five-second delay raises the risk of a visitor bouncing by 90%. Worse, with each additional second of load time, conversion rates drop by an average of 4.42 percent.

3. The best place to start understanding your site speed and how to enhance it is with Google's Page Speed Insight tool. How to Improve Your Google PageSpeed Insights Score? The Page Speed Insights report can appear to be overly technical. But, the Opportunities part of the report does an excellent job of providing precise action items for the developers to follow. The next steps for individual site owners will differ depending on the opportunities and challenges identified by the Page Speed Insights tool. However, there are a few typical mistakes that developers do that have an impact on page performance. The best practices listed below are some easy tweaks that can assist improve the speed and load times of most web pages. 1. Image Optimization ● Among content, images and videos cause most issues related to slow load times. ● Having optimized images and videos can reduce FCP and LCP time ● Users can resize and compress images ● Users can fix the dimensions of the images ● The use of CDN can highly improve the Page Load speed 2. Embed not Upload As mentioned above images and videos affect load times the most. If you have videos on your site that show off your products or services, don't submit them. They not only take up a lot of storage space, but they can also put a strain on your web server if a lot of people are watching the films at the same time. Instead, upload videos to a third-party service (such as YouTube) and embed video content on your website to drastically reduce load times. 3. Reduce Redirects Redirects can increase the Time-to-First-Byte (TTFB), or the time between sending a request to the server and receiving the first data back.

4. Avoiding long redirect chains can help you increase page speed and is a good SEO practice in general. 4. Use Asynchronous Loading for JavaScript To put it simply, asynchronous loading allows the web browser to multitask more effectively. In synchronous loading, the browser pauses all other activities while the JavaScript file loads Asynchronous loading allows the browser to perform other activities, such as painting a table or loading a CSS Stylesheet, while the JavaScript is being downloaded. Because this optimization necessitates additional backend knowledge, you should seek the advice of a web professional before implementing this method. 5. Enable Browser Caching This is a fairly basic optimization that speeds up the loading of your web pages for repeat users. Images and videos will be saved on the user's device and loaded from there the next time they visit the website thanks to browser caching. Because enabling browser caching necessitates changing (or creating) a.htaccess file, it's best done by a professional site developer. Pagespeed Insights Vs Lighthouse The most significant distinction between PageSpeed Insights and Lighthouse is the data that both programs utilize to calculate your score. Lighthouse only uses 'lab data' to assess the website's performance on a single device and fixed set of network conditions. PageSpeed Insights, on the other hand, used both lab and field data. Google obtains field data from anonymous users "in the real world on a variety of devices and network situations" over a period of time.

5. The problem with both however is that both the reports by Page Speed Insights and Lighthouse are too technical for most people to understand. With Auditzy, you can audit your websites easily to get a comprehensive report supported by Google Lighthouse and Page Speed Insights data. What’s more, it comes with additional features like Site Monitoring wherein you can constantly keep a check on your website’s health regularly. Conclusion Investing in page speed has numerous advantages for both your SEO success and your site users' digital experience. As a result, learning how to use Google's Page Speed Insights tool is valuable for any website owner or digital marketer, even those with limited technical or backend experience.