How Can the Google Page Speed Tool Help You
With more and more emphasis placed on increasing the speed of your website, there is a variety of new tools available. Google has even created their own Page Speed tool that is used under the Firebug addon. Currently the only available browser is Firefox, which surprises a lot people because Firebug is also available with Google Chrome. Here is a closer look at what the Google Page Speed tool offers and how it can be used.
What Does the Google Page Speed Tool Do?
The ultimate goal is to diagnose your website and determine how well it performs. It bases your website performance against a specific set of rules or standards, comparing your website to factors that are known to increase websites speed. This includes a variety of factors such as data uploading, resource caching, and even total upload time. Once the analysis has been completed, evry factor will be given a color-code score (red = high priority, yellow = medium priority, and green = working fine or low priority) and your website will be given numeric total score 0-100/100. It will also give you suggestions of different steps that you can take to become aligned with each rule.
It is important to note that rules used by this tool came from two different sources. The first is from blog posts and article recommendations from well known website developers. The second source is the developers at Google. They added rules based upon their own research as well as some standards that were created internally and applied to other Google applications.
How User Friendly Is the Google Page Speed Tool?
In total, this tool is very simple to install and use. However, it is important to note that this add-on was designed assuming that you have a semi-advanced knowledge of different techniques used in website development. For example, it would be beneficial to have at least a basic understanding of Javascript, CSS, and HTTP. Fortunately, if you do not have this type of background, there is a lot of documentation that has been created to ensure that everyone can use this tool. It just means that you will need do a little extra reading before making changes.
Using the Google Page Speed Tool with Other Page Speed Tools
Most, if not all, webmasters will use several different tools to assess how well their website is performing. As with all tools, there are a lot of similarities in what rules they are following, but there are some differences as well. Google points out that some rules that may be different include: deferring JavaScript until the page has completely loaded. They also note that this tool is one of the few open source tools that allows you to do a before and after comparison that you can use to decide whether or not to actually make the changes that are being recommended.
In the end, Google Page Speed tool is very similar to many other similar page speed tools such as YSlow Firefox add-on. However, as should be expected, there are some rules that are different for the Google Page Speed tool than other page speed tools. The key is to gather as much information as possible and making the decision that you think is best for your website.
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