Why You Should Not Worry About Google Page Speed Grades

We see an alarming number of people getting obsessed with and worrying about getting a perfect Google Pagespeed grade.

Here is why you should stop worrying about page speed insights.

PageSpeed Insights Is NOT A Page Speed Tool

Page speed is not only important it is VITAL but Googles PageSpeed does not even measure the speed of your page. Note that the tool is called PageSpeed INSIGHTS not Pagespeed TEST.

So What Is It Then?

It is a website development tool that can point out things that MIGHT be impacting your page speed IF YOUR SITE IS SLOW, but it does not measure the speed of your site.

It is simply grading sites using a one size fits all "best practices" test. We all know that every website is different, providing the same test for millions of variations in design is plain silly.

We could show you examples of websites that have a perfect PageSpeed grade but load much slower than sites that do not.

We have had many clients come to us who actually increased the load time of their sites to get that perfect grade.

Here's the thing, Google PageSpeed will not buy your products or service your site needs to be fast for your visitors!

The Reality

Chasing a perfect Pagespeed score is a waste of your time and money. For real, live websites it is just not realistic. A lot of the functionality your site needs to run can reduce your PageSpeed grade.

Google say a site should load in 2 seconds or under, we will try to hammer that down as low as we can normally to around one second or less. Trust us, your site will not be penalised for speed by Google if it is loading in 2 seconds or under.

The Test We Use

We use GTmetrix to run our tests. GTmetrix gives much more detailed result and uses Googles Lighthouse engine when testing your site.