
How Google Pagespeed works - benschwarz
https://calibreapp.com/blog/how-pagespeed-works
======
mfontani
> In July, the SEO ranking algorithm was updated to include page speed as a
> ranking factor for both mobile pages __and ads __.

What's one supposed to do when PageSpeed only points to Google's own asset
delivery services as being "the" big problems which cause a lower score?

\- "serve images in next gen formats" \- complains about images served from
tpc.googlesyndication.com

\- "efficiently encode images" \- same as above

\- "reduce javascript execution time" \- cdn.ampproject.org;
securepubads.g.doubleclick.net; www.googletagservices.com

.. ?

I can easily get rid of those issues, "simply" by not showing any ads. The
site will then be really fast, and... I'll get the ability to display ads
again?!

Shame the ad-related revenue will be 0, which isn't unfortunately a good thing
for the site.

Why is Google themselves not doing things "right" in order to ensure a speedy
execution?

A while back, one of the reasons for a low score was that the GPT.js code
(required to show ads) had a short expiration time. Dammit. How am I supposed
to fix that, Google?

~~~
dylan604
The left hand does not always know what the right hand is doing in large
corps. I'm assuming the SEO team is not in daily contact with the ad delivery
team(s). The SEO team is just reporting on what they how they are seeing the
page load without concern for where the slowdowns occur. It is quite
funny/sad/ironic that it is within the same letters of the Alphabet that are
the problem.

I had the same experience with Apple when the iTunes team were invalidating
ProRes files created from Final Cut Pro.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> The left hand does not always know what the right hand is doing in large
> corps.

On the other hand, it's a _good_ thing to not give a free pass for bad
behavior in products you produce.

------
fogetti
It's hard to take this blog post seriously when there is not one but THREE
open Github issues which poses a serious question about the credibility of
this whole pagespeed circus. It's just fundamentally wrong to claim that
pagespeed speed score is based on the Lighthouse speed score when hundreds of
people are reporting otherwise and even Lighthouse is suspiciously silent on
this matter.

~~~
benschwarz
Hi, I'm the author :-)

I've left significant levels of details about pagespeed on the lighthouse
issue tracker over the last few months. It's really frustrating to see the
lighthouse team being blamed for something that isn't operationally even
theirs… but that's a big company for you.

The biggest contributing factor to unstable pagespeed scores is the power of
the machines that do the tests. Last time I checked the scores / bench mark
scores for pagespeed were all over the place. … All the same, it's really
important to understand how it all works. Hopefully the post had something for
you?

------
stingraycharles
> The speed of your site on mobile will affect your overall SEO ranking. > If
> your pages load slowly, it will reduce your ad quality score, and ads will
> cost more.

We've deliberately excluded mobile devices from our ad campaigns. Do I
understand correctly that even though we do not serve any mobile visitors at
all, we're still judged by the page speed of the mobile page, not just the
desktop one?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>we do not serve any mobile visitors at all //

How is that possible, if people know your domain name they'll type it in to
their phone/tablet/watch/gamepad (or search from their shared history, or
whatever). Do you reject connections that indicate they're from non-desktop
devices??

I can see "we don't target mobile" but users don't often care what you're
targeting and to my surprise recently I had to review mobile usage and found
that it's higher in general than desktop across the board and my sites (small
local websites and personal sites, mind you) followed that trend.

~~~
stingraycharles
These are adwords landing pages. We're in super MVP-mode, trying to establish
some contacts with potential customers, they leave behind an email address, we
set up a call, etc.

I understand what you're saying, but we can literally see from Google
Analytics that we have 0 mobile visitors. As would be expected.

It just seems weird for being judged by our mobile experience in this case,
but it would good to know if this were the case.

~~~
Alupis
> we do not serve any mobile visitors at all

> > How is that possible

> These are adwords landing pages. We're in super MVP-mode

In your specific case, google pagespeed ranking is probably irrelevant.

If you truly have 0 mobile visitors, and these are just adwords landing pages,
then people are probably not "Googling" your company, so search ranking is
probably totally irrelevant at this point too.

~~~
stingraycharles
As far as I understood from the article, it also impacts the adwords quality
score. Or did I misunderstand this?

~~~
benschwarz
That's what I took from it yep.

------
ivoras
Too bad Google's own page describing Pagespeed and Lighthouse fares abysmally
on their own tests.
([https://imgur.com/a/56FVOwK](https://imgur.com/a/56FVOwK))

I'm sick and tired of Google playing the role of the global regulator of
what's acceptable and what's not. Not everyone can afford own data centers and
CDNs to serve content. Not every single page can benefit from SSL.

And web's not the only area they are regulating through monopoly - the number
of hoops one has to jump through these days to run an e-mail server, just to
have its e-mail acceptable by the holy Google e-mail servers is silly.

~~~
wnevets
> Not every single page can benefit from SSL.

huh?

~~~
opportune
You don't need "SSL" (TLS, https, etc.) to serve static, uncontroversial
content

~~~
wnevets
That's absolutely untrue. For example a man in the middle could intercept and
modify the page.

[https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-
needs...](https://www.troyhunt.com/heres-why-your-static-website-needs-https/)

~~~
opportune
This was a good article, I concede the point.

------
neves
Nice article, but is it just me that thinks it is weird that Google ranks
better the pages that are speedier in _their_ browser?

Antitrust here?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
This is curious, I'd like to see some study on this point but do you think
that the ranking would vary a lot depending on which browser was used to
provide the small speed related element? Any anecdotal data about sites that
are super slow on Chrome but blazing on other browsers?

~~~
neves
Just that the rank criteria is how fast it is in Chrome. Some of the micro
benchmarks, like Time To Interactive, looks really browse dependent.

------
lwansbrough
Reading the definition for TTI is also helpful in narrowing down your page
speed problems: [https://github.com/WICG/time-to-
interactive#definition](https://github.com/WICG/time-to-
interactive#definition)

Also this seems like the right time for me to brag about the impact we were
able to have on our site's responsiveness. I know a lot of people will think a
lot of this is BS being pushed by Google, and I agree in some cases, but
overall our site is incredibly fast now (perceptively, significantly faster),
and that's thanks to Lighthouse and its suggestions.

This is without HTML caching, so still some room for improvement :)
[https://i.imgur.com/d7KCTmj.png](https://i.imgur.com/d7KCTmj.png)

This is a full Vue SPA with chunking enabled.

Edit: oops, I was behind a VPN when I ran the test which impacted my ping. All
metrics are down to 0.3s max :)

------
ianamartin
It’s astounding to me that web development is in such a state that it takes
google dinging placement for people to start thinking that speed is important.

Speed is a feature. Speed is your most important feature. It’s a gazillion
times more important than all the other cool features that developers and
product managers think are important.

~~~
londons_explore
But react is all I know how to write...!

~~~
robertoandred
React doesn't make your site slow.

------
ipernet
> In July, the SEO ranking algorithm was updated to include page speed as a
> ranking factor for both mobile pages and ads.

July 2018, according to both linked sources.

------
tantalor
If the weight of "Estimated Input Latency" is zero, why is it even mentioned?

~~~
benschwarz
Because it's in the code and it's factually correct. It felt weird to not
mention it!

------
LemRemy
Hi, do you have any figures for this subject? >If your pages load slowly, it
will reduce your ad quality score, and ads will cost more.

Thanks.

------
z3t4
You can check for the page speed user agent and do some optimizations to
satisfy it.

