A hot topic heading into this year has been Google's Web Core Vitals, and with it, we're always looking for ways to improve site performance. The benefits of good site performance range from positive search ranking points to improved brand perception from users.
Generally, we start with the most obvious optimizations such as condensing large images or refactoring code for efficiency. However, getting results isn’t always so straightforward. Tools such as PageSpeed Insights will generate a list of issues that should be addressed to improve the site score but can vary wildly based on the tool, location of the test, and scoring criteria. The issue is that PageSpeed Insights is testing using very rigid guardrails - which evolve based on Google's own whims - so it may not actually provide an accurate look at how your website is performing.
You may be able to view your website on your phone and perceive that it loads in 2-3 seconds. But according to Google's PSI report, it may be recorded as taking 16 seconds, because Google artificially throttles mobile speeds to an outdated 3G data (no wifi or LTE) standard. For this reason, we use a combination of site speed tools such as Pingdom, GTmetrix and code-level evaluation tools that give a more holistic (and thus realistic) score for your site and offer more nuanced ways to improve.
Google Warns of Over-Emphasizing Site Speed Optimization
When Google added Core Web Vitals (AKA site speed metrics) to one of the hundreds of factors that go into its dozens of organic search algorithms, it shook the web development community and focused a lot of attention and resources on site speed optimization (SSO). While we have long cautioned a measured approach to SSO, with a focus on perceptible speeds over pure scoring, recently there has been explicit guidance from Google on the topic.
- “I think a big issue is also that site owners sometimes over-fixate on the metrics themselves. They see some number, and it’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to get this to like some other number, some higher state.’ And then they spend months of time working on this. And they see this as they’re doing something for their Search rankings. And probably a lot of those incremental changes are not really visible in Search.”
- -- John Mueller, Senior Search Analyst, Google