
Google Pagespeed Test Fails Itself on Mobile - dates
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.google.com%2Fspeed%2Fpagespeed
======
callumlocke
This doesn't surprise me. The PageSpeed Insights site has a very atypical use
case.

Anyway, the PSI 'score' is only a rough guide to help point you to problems.
It can be kind of useful, in that if you get something like 97-100 then you
can be pretty sure it's a very fast page... but it's also probably a page that
doesn't do much beyond displaying something. With a more serious web app that
does more interesting things, the score becomes a less useful indicator – it's
often possible to make code changes that improve perceived performance but
actually reduce the PSI score.

For example, it's impossible for PSI to really know if inlining a script is
going to generally improve or worsen performance, because it doesn't know your
site's usage patterns, or which parts of your UI need to render first for a
user to feel that the your UI 'is fast', whatever that means. UI performance
is a subtler art than, say, algorithmic performance, and much less
quantifiable. That's why many people prefer webpagetest.org, which comes with
much smarter tools to record and analyse _how_ the page loads, so you can
actually improve UI performance.

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arikrak
It does poorly when empty, but Google Pagespeed on Google Pagespeed does well
on Google Pagespeed.

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.google.com%2Fspeed%2Fpagespeed%2Finsights%2F%3Furl%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fdevelopers.google.com%252Fspeed%252Fpagespeed)

------
durrrrrrr
Amazes me how much weighting people sometimes put in these type of tools, and
start panicking because they enter a website they work on and it comes back
with some red text.

Have had jobs where random marketing colleagues email the developers along the
lines of "Why do we only score 7/10 in this test, 45.5% in this test, and 2
critical issues were found in this test?"

Don't get me wrong, they are useful, but people act the same way they would if
their virus scanner found their computer was completely comprised. Unless the
tools have a major tangible impact in something that affects the business, ie.
SEO, I tend to ignore them unless they are a simple fix.

~~~
akamaka
Your comment brings back memories of previous clients I worked with, who
phoned me in a panic after running an HTML validator that turned up mutliple
_warnings_. Not even errors.

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brimtown
Also fails google.com on mobile.
[http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/](http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/) however
is a 99/100.

~~~
thekaleb
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fmotherfuckingwebsite.com%2F)

~~~
guelo
Apparently motherfuckingwebsite would score 100 if they took out the google
analytics tracker.

~~~
wldcordeiro
The suggestion says to cache the js file for the analytics tracker, not to
remove it.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's hosted by Google, so they control the cache time.

~~~
eli
You actually can host the Google Analytics JS file locally, though I'm not
sure it's an officially supported configuration.

~~~
danieltillett
Do you have any resources on doing this?

~~~
rgbrenner
it's definitely not a supported config:
[https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032389?hl=en](https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032389?hl=en)

But you can download it, and host it locally. Just update it periodically. As
you can see from the changelog, it only changes every few months:
[https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...](https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/analyticsjs/changelog?csw=1)

Google actually takes a few days to deploy updates to all of their servers. So
a daily script to update it on your server would be fine.

~~~
danieltillett
Thanks for this.

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cbr
The PageSpeed Insights tool gives itself [1] a high score [2]; what this link
is showing is that it's giving its documentation pages [3] a low score. Not
that that's much better.

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/)

[2]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.google.com%2Fspeed%2Fpagespeed%2Finsights%2F)

[3]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/)

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pseudosavant
Wow, the mobile version fails badly (62/100). The desktop one doesn't fair
that well either though (77/100).

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ereckers
Hilarious that this was just posted as I had to answer to it yesterday. Are we
working together?

Here's an email I ended up sending yesterday in reply to a Google Page Speed
Test report:

> We can address most of these issues with some further optimizations.

> One thing that will always appear in the Google Page Speed Test reports is
> the "Should Fix" issue with "Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in
> above-the-fold content". This is a much discussed flag that Google returns
> that would really only work with non-modern websites, and a test that Google
> itself can't pass:
> [https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=www.google.com).

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Theodores
'Fails' is a bit harsh. Since when was it decreed that Google should make all
of their web pages blazingly fast on mobile? Al Gore didn't pass any laws on
that.

If Google make a developer oriented tool then it is no surprise that it works
brilliantly on the desktop and slightly sub-optimally on the mobile phone. I
am quite useless at web design yet I can game Pagespeed to get 95% or higher
in the score. Of course the javascript will be mashed into some black hole
that can't be un-minified and the way things load will not be well suited for
the visitor seeing more than one page (using cached things). I can't believe
someone at Google could not have done what I do to 'game' Pagespeed. The fact
that they haven't is good, you should never let scores from things like
Pagespeed or YSlow determine how a web page is delivered, it is like using a
'defeat device'.

I do wish they would do something to Pagespeed as they have changed what it
does over the years and the latest iteration didn't excite me, I preferred the
previous one, in part because you could run it against 'localhost'.

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jefflinwood
The Pagespeed Insights API is pretty easy to use, if anyone is interested in
Pagespeed Insights as a service.

I built an Android app for it as sort of a proof-of-concept back when Holo was
a thing, and it was very straight forward. I'm actually kind of surprised that
Google didn't build one themselves.

------
fuentesjr
Sometimes the dog food on the other side of the fence does taste better.

------
huula
I heard it's closed already last year?

~~~
garrettgrimsley
You may be thinking of PageSpeed Service[0], which was a proxy service of
Google's. PageSpeed Service was shut down[3] in May of 2015. PageSpeed
Insights[1] is a service of theirs that checks pages for usability and
performance and is still active. There is also a PageSpeed Insights SDK[2]
available, so you could self-host if they decide to stop offering the service.

[0]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/service](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/service)

[1]
[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/)

[2] [https://code.google.com/p/page-speed/](https://code.google.com/p/page-
speed/)

[3] [http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/06/google-shuts-down-
pagespeed...](http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/06/google-shuts-down-pagespeed-
service-for-accelerating-websites/)

------
n0us
cnn.com gets 95/100 on mobile user experience which must be a joke of some
kind. My own page (the development version) gets a similar score in spite of
loading much must faster. reddit.com also almost fails the desktop test.

This is a nice tool to give you suggestions about things you might want to
change but it's hard to use it as a predictor of page quality.

~~~
acdha
cnn.com gets 95/100 because it's just an HTTP redirect to www.cnn.com, which
gets 59/100 on desktop and 48 on mobile:

[https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=...](https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com)

[https://redbot.org/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcnn.com](https://redbot.org/?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fcnn.com)

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matchagaucho
Anomaly of recursion?

