Google Page Speed

[Big Game Hunter]

I can't see where anyone has touched on this subject yet, but we have been noticing that Google is putting a lot of emphasis on page speed. Ref: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogsp...h-ranking.html

We have been looking at the results from the page tests and there is a lot of javascript functions in the actinic system that google is suggesting that we compress them. Has anyone else started having a play with this?

We are concerned that the page speed is affecting our rankings. Anyone have any views comments on this?

[kakshaks]

Hi
Not sure if you use Firebug (Firefox plugin) but that has some great functionality for checking page speed.
Because I use 1and1 as my host, they have very specific problems with using utilities such as gzip and minify that might have helped with compression etc. To get around the issue, I have simply run a compress against both actinic scripts which seems to have removed the red warning triangle when checking page speed.
Might be a good idea to look at competitors sites and see what page speed they have which will give you an idea of what is a 'good' speed to aim for.
Cheers
K

[Big Game Hunter]

Hi K

We use the firebug tool to do exactly as you say, but we are worried about what impact it has on the actinic scripts if we do use compression methods. A question to actinic is really, what are the doing about the java scripting?

[Sean Williams]

I would have thought the speed of the server on which you're running Actinic is more of a concern, and to a lesser degree the speed of the connection the person viewing the website has.
Without actually knowing what I'm talking about (no change there then ) I don't recall seeing a reasonably modern computer that didn't run Javascript in a flash, once it was downloaded.
Now we have moved from a shared server to a dedicated one - everything on the pages, including checkout, happens pretty well instantly.

[dazinspain]

Gzip

you can gzip the actinic site. First you need to create a .htaccess folder and upload it to your server in the httpfolder. then you can upload the code from the gzip site (google gzip) and add that to the new .htaccess folder it has really made a difference to the speed of my site.

[fergusw]

Hi Shannon,

We wrote about this back in January this year when it first came around and whilst there was some debate about the effect and relevance of website speed performance.
You can read our blog on it here: Google Page Speed
[N.B. there is a slight commercial leaning to our hosting on this blog however the information and advice is still relevant]

There are links to tools, websites and browser add-ons that can help you assess your websites performance.
As well as the benefits within Google's eyes one of the main reasons for paying attention to this is to improve your customers experience of your website. Increasing speed performance improves the usability all round. One less hurdle for your customers to overcome.
The google page speed browser plugin gives a score out of 100 [Google only gets 93!]. We'd aim for 90, however anything 80 or more should be your target at least.

e.g. your http://www.etoyszone.co.uk/ only gets 63

[Steve G Griggs]

Google page speed.

The speed of the server will have an impact, but a lot of what the Google page speed is about is the overheads caused by inefficient scripts, pages that have badly written code/html slowing down page loading times, over-large file sizes (any file size not just .jpg's .gif's and .png's). It's about how fast your pages download to the visitors browser. Using g-zip would certainly help.
This is certainly something we all need to be aware of, and there are some free tools available from Google to measure you page speed (I think most if not all need to run in Google Chrome).
I think it's certainly something Actinic (and all of us) will need to be aware of and address in future versions.