24
votes
How can I simulate a slow connection for page load?
In Chrome, you can open the developer tools, click in the device icon (1), and then select the connection throttling (2).
Edit (2015-11-03)
Since around Chrome 45, it actually got a little bit ...
- 341
16
votes
Accepted
How much critical CSS can be inlined before there is a negative performance impact?
As of 2011, you will see the first drop in page performance after 14.6 KB has been sent. For the speediest page, all of your HTML code from the first byte up to and including the critical CSS should ...
- 14.9k
12
votes
How to test the speed of a page that is guarded behind login page?
2020 update
The Lighthouse tool is now part of Chrome, and you can access it from Developer Tools (F12) -> Audit. You can use it on logged-in pages, and even against Chrome on a real mobile device (...
- 340
12
votes
Accepted
Blank image. What to use: Base64 vs 1x1 JPEG image
The base64 image option should be used where you would only have a very small number of images and you want to eliminate the network overhead of fetching a picture from the server. However from what ...
- 10.1k
11
votes
Specifying image dimensions to improve browser performance
Browsers download data in parallel and try to start rendering the page as soon as possible.
If you do not specify the size, the browser has no idea how large the image is going to be until after the ...
- 2,045
10
votes
How to optimize the load time of initial connection and SSL handshake phase of a web page on a 3G network?
Initial Connection
You will find that the initial connection includes negotiating the SSL, so since the handshake is high, its a good indicator that something is seriously wrong with the way you have ...
- 32.6k
9
votes
How does Google judge page performance if audience is from one specific region & server is also in same region
Google measures speed from the US. However, for SEO, Google doesn't actively penalize sites unless they are very slow. Unless your pages (without JS, CSS, and images) takes more than 7 seconds ...
- 94.4k
8
votes
How to optimize the load time of initial connection and SSL handshake phase of a web page on a 3G network?
Reading the title of your question, there are two things you can do to speed up the initial connection and SSL/TLS handshake. These work for any connection, not just 3G, so you should use these as ...
- 2,241
6
votes
Leverage browser caching on GitHub pages
USE A CDN (CLOUDFLARE)
By the far, the more efficient way to increase your score is to use a free content delivery network to serve your site. I recommend the free version of CloudFlare because of ...
- 61
5
votes
Accepted
What if one certain page is much slower than the rest of your website?
Page speed is a ranking factor to some degree, as mentioned by Matt Cutts in this related video (Aug 2013): Is page speed a more important factor for mobile sites?.
However, pages are also ranked on ...
- 41.4k
5
votes
Google PageSpeed, optimizing Google's own elements
You don't have to do everything listed as an optimization. If using a custom font is important to the design of your website then use it. You have a choice between a slightly slower (initial) page ...
- 85.8k
5
votes
Specifying image dimensions to improve browser performance
Responsive Design does not normally use any width or height attributes
Google Development Tools is a guide and you shouldn't need to enforce everything you read on their site, in fact some of the ...
- 32.6k
5
votes
Accepted
Theme load speed - do a few seconds matter?
Tests
https://gtmetrix.com/
http://www.webpagetest.org/
Speed is important - every second costs money. Every second of delay in page loading time can result in a 7% decrease of online sales.
- 9,599
5
votes
Blank image. What to use: Base64 vs 1x1 JPEG image
Definitely go with the data URI, unless you need support for IE < 8. (Browser support.)
Embedding lots of tiny images directly in the HTML may look like it will take up more bandwidth than linking ...
- 686
5
votes
Can minifying the HTML of page have a negative effect on SEO?
This is a good question, but the answer is no - it will not affect your search engine rankings negatively. It will provide a (marginal) benefit due to decreased file size.
To understand why it won't ...
- 1,231
5
votes
Google Page Speed Insights is recommending inline styling and complaining about render blocking JS. Are these even relevant?
One of the Google guys, Paul Lewis, said achieving 85 or better should be your goal. Of course those things you mention matter. Both to Google and, especially, users!
Page render blocking is ...
- 4,608
5
votes
Accepted
Is it faster to request a single 7KB file faster than to request 6 files totalling 7KB?
With HTTP/1, the answer is yes.
As mentioned by Michael Hampton, combining files (which prefer I call "concatenation") is a typical web site performance optimization. This is due to overhead related ...
- 251
5
votes
Accepted
What is above-the-fold content?
http://www.whereisthefold.com/ states:
The fold is a term used by webmasters and website owners to mean the portion of your site which can be shown when first entering the site without scrolling ...
- 13.5k
5
votes
If I change a Wordpress Theme then will it result in Performance and Page Loading Speed Improvements?
Always Look for Better Solutions
As a rule-of-thumb, always look to see if there are any better solutions. Themes often become dated or even abanded when the developers move on or focus on a new ...
- 314
5
votes
Accepted
SEO-Being penalized by Google Fonts
Web fonts incur a small performance cost
Penalized is a strong word for this situation. What damage is it really doing you?
You seem to have a whole bunch of web fonts on the site. The simplest thing ...
- 529
5
votes
Accepted
Why would Google Analytics report slow loading times when other website testing tools show it is very fast?
The average page load time in Analytics shows actual user experience data based on network, server, and browser time for multiple visitors. For example, if you are receiving traffic from Zambia (which ...
- 3,787
5
votes
How to improve page speed of a site built with Prismic
I work on the Developer Experience team over at Prismic, so I might be able to help answer your question!
When I run some of these sites through PageSpeed insights, it's true that some aren't scoring ...
- 51
4
votes
Is gzip compression available for GitHub pages?
besides Dan's answer, depending on your static-site generators, there can be some plugins that make the compressed .gz-ed version offline while generating the site. By that way, your server can serve ...
- 141
4
votes
What is the screen size used by Google's PageSpeed Insights for mobile previews?
I created a test you can run in order to check. For me, it was 412px for mobile and 1350px for desktop:
Here's the test: https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww....
- 141
4
votes
What is recommended minimum object size for gzip performance benefits?
Apache Tomcat has gzip filter and it starts to zip from 2kb, my quick test tells that it's the lowest boundary, and you can increase it at least to 3-4kb. Because for 2kb you will get a similar size ...
- 141
4
votes
What is the screen size used by Google's PageSpeed Insights for mobile previews?
It's 320px wide.
To figure this out I ran Page Speed Insight (PSI) on a page with ranges of media queries that changed the background color at different breakpoints. After narrowing the width down to ...
- 61
4
votes
Does SPDY benefit SEO rankings?
There is no arbitrary bonus for using SPDY so SPDY itself does not affect SEO.
But SPDY can make your site more responsive (i.e. load faster) which is a ranking factor so it can indirectly affect ...
- 85.8k
4
votes
Accepted
Why would my site load slower after I switched to https?
This is a question that might be too broad for this platform. It's true that encryption carries a computational overhead, but with the right configuration, it can be negligible.
This video from the ...
- 190
4
votes
Accepted
How do I install/configure install Google's PageSpeed Module on cPanel (not WHM) and/or via PuTTY?
Rather simple.... you can't.
Shared hosting even with SSH enabled does not give the necessary permissions to install new server-side processes because your actions could affect their security or the ...
- 32.6k
4
votes
What is more important: time to first byte, or overall load time?
What actually matters to users is the time at which something appears on their screen that they can use. That generally means that the page has to finish loading, the CSS and JavaScript has to ...
- 94.4k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible