At the end of last year, Google had a warning message for those owners of sites that are slow in their Chromium Blog.  This blog is run by the developers of Google’s Chrome browser.  They warn “In the future, Chrome my identify sites that typical load fast or slow for users with clear badging.”  The speed of your site already is factoring into your search engine ranking.

This badging could include a message on a loading screen for slow sites, and a green progress indicator for fast sites.

Google Sham badging

Thankfully it looks like this change will take place slowly in gradual steps.  To learn about this go to the Chromium Blog and read all about it.

The Chromium Blog mentions a couple of Google sites to test your site.  Here are some other sites to test your site with and help you get the speed of your site up to par.

  1. GTMetrix – This site has two different tests it runs on your site and then clearly tells you what to change.  You do need to be aware especially with CMS’s (WordPress, Joomla, etc) that some of their advice may break your site.
  2. Webpagetest – This site also lets you know what needs to be changed to make your site faster and focuses on some of the same things as GTMetrix.  But still it is useful to get another perspective on your site.
  3. Pingdom – This site test the speed of the site and can do it from different servers around the world.  The downside is the information is less in depth and thus less helpful.

Now that I have run through those site I do have a bone to pick with them.  Some of the things they tell you to do are not really possible for most sites.  These are the three worst.

  1. Leverage browser caching – That is great when the items are on your site.  But if the items are from third party sites, such as Google Analytics, Google Fonts, Facebook, Twitter, etc, they can not be changed.  So you can never get that score higher unless you don’t want to use the aforementioned items on your website.
  2.  Expires headers – Another great thing to add to the components of your website.  But again like #1 above if they come from a 3rd party site you cannot do so.
  3.  Make fewer HTTP requests – Great to try.  But if you have a site based on a CMS (WordPress, Joomla, etc) then combining those scripts and style sheets may break your site.  You mileage may very.

If you look at these sites and need any help with making your site faster just call or email us.  We would love to help you out!