{"id":4611,"date":"2017-01-18T16:37:56","date_gmt":"2017-01-18T14:37:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/?p=4611"},"modified":"2023-09-19T16:52:35","modified_gmt":"2023-09-19T13:52:35","slug":"pagespeed-insights-score-vs-wordpress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themeisle.com\/blog\/pagespeed-insights-score-vs-wordpress\/","title":{"rendered":"PageSpeed Insights Score: Why Faster Hosting Is More Important Than a 90+ Speed Rating"},"content":{"rendered":"

You want your WordPress site to load lightning-fast. And if you’re like most of us, when you think of improving your site’s page load times<\/a> to get that “lightning-fast” designation, you think of your Google PageSpeed Insights score.<\/p>\n

For many website owners, it’s their white whale. Getting a perfect score on PageSpeed Insights is the impossible quest that will magically solve all of their page speed woes.<\/p>\n

But is a high PageSpeed Insights score the be-all and end-all of fast page load times? Sorry, but no.<\/strong> If your focus is on improving your site’s page load times, finding a better host will often take you further.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this post, I’m going to run a real test to show you that high-performance hosting<\/a> will do more for your page load times than endlessly striving to improve your PageSpeed Insights<\/a> score.<\/p>\n

What is Google PageSpeed Insights? Should you care?<\/h2>\n

\"PageSpeed<\/p>\n

If you’re not already familiar, PageSpeed Insights<\/a> is a Google-offered tool that helps you both analyze and optimize your website’s performance for desktop and mobile visitors. Before I get into what exactly that entails, let’s talk about what PageSpeed Insights is not:<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s not a tool that gives you a real number for how long your page takes to load. You need other tools for that. Instead, PageSpeed Insights gives you a score from 0-100 based on how well your site is technically optimized, with separate scores for desktop speed and mobile speed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To calculate this score, Google uses two metrics (direct quote<\/em>):<\/p>\n

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    \n
  • time to above-the-fold load<\/strong>: Elapsed time from the moment a user requests a new page and to the moment the above-the-fold content is rendered by the browser.<\/li>\n
  • time to full page load<\/strong>: Elapsed time from the moment a user requests a new page to the moment the page is fully rendered by the browser.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    And while Google’s suggestions are important, they readily admit<\/a> that the test “only considers the network-independent aspects of page performance”<\/em>. That means PageSpeed Insights does not<\/strong>, among other aspects, directly consider the speed of your host.<\/p>\n

    So while PageSpeed Insights gives you great suggestions for speeding up the technical aspects of your page, getting a perfect score on PageSpeed Insights will never be enough to completely overcome a slow host.<\/strong><\/p>\n

    In Google’s own words, the “absolute performance of the page will still be dependent upon a user’s network connection.”<\/em><\/p>\n

    * It should be noted that Google is also talking about a visitor’s personal Internet speed.<\/em><\/p>\n

    Do visitors care if you score 100\/100 on PageSpeed Insights?<\/h2>\n

    No.<\/strong> Most of your visitors won’t have a single clue what PageSpeed Insights is, let alone care about your site’s score.<\/p>\n

    Plenty of data says that users care about how quickly your page loads in absolute terms<\/strong>. Akamai found that, at least for eCommerce sites, 30% of users<\/a> want sites to load in under 1 second. And on mobile, 74% of users<\/a> will abandon a site that takes longer than 5 seconds to load.<\/p>\n