Your free Website Speed Test includes a page score and performance enhancement opportunities from Google PageSpeed Insights. We’ve included Google’s information alongside the results of Uptrends testing to supply you with all the information you need to improve your page’s user experience. Uptrends gives you the page details element by element to assist you with finding problem page elements and show you your page’s load progression using an easy to read waterfall report.
What are PageSpeed Insights?
PageSpeed Insights is a tool provided by Google for web developers (and anyone else with an inquiring mind) that wants an overview of their page’s performance as seen by Google. Google also includes performance opportunities to help you focus your speed optimization efforts.
Why did my PageSpeed Insights score change?
If you’ve used our Free Speed Test tool in the past, you may notice that your score has changed. Uptrends gets the PageSpeed Insight score and the subsequent recommendations from Google. Your score has changed because Google has changed how it calculates the score in the fifth version of the PageSpeed Insights API.
Previously the PageSpeed Insights score was based primarily on the conventions used to reduce page size and speed up the rendering process. The new version takes those things into account but also adjusts the score based on other factors coming from the Lighthouse diagnostic tools (lab data) and field data (real-world experiences).
How does Google calculate my page score?
PageSpeed Insights pulls data from multiple sources for mobile and desktop speeds that results in a page score and recommendations for improving the page.
Lab Data
Lighthouse collects and analyzes data about the pages’ load times and assigns them a score: ≥90 fast, 50–89 average, ≤ 50 slow. Lighthouse bases the score on:
- First Contentful Paint: The moment that the browser first renders DOM content.
- First Meaningful Paint: The moment when a user feels the primary content has loaded.
- Speed Index: How quickly a page is visibly loaded
- First CPU Idle: When most UI elements become interactive
- Time to Interactive: Page has displayed useful content, event handlers are registered, and the page responds within 50 milliseconds to user interactions.
- Estimated input latency: Input responsiveness
Field Data
Users of Google’s Chrome browser can choose to have the Chrome browser collect data about page performance as they navigate the web. When Google calculates the site score, it accesses this data to see how real users experienced your page based on:
- First Contentful Paint: The moment that the browser first renders DOM content.
- First Input Delay: The elapsed time between a user’s first page interaction and the page’s response.
Google also compares your page speeds to those of competing pages and adjusts the page score accordingly.
Page Audits
Google examines the page as it currently exists and gives you a list of items your page does well and those details that need additional attention. In the page audits you will find Information about:
- Opportunities or ways you can make your page faster,
- Diagnostics about how well the page uses best practices in web development, and
- Passed Audits which includes the list of audits that your page completed successfully.
For more discussion on Google PageSpeed Insights visit Stack Overflow.
Why should you care about your PageSpeed Insights score?
Google ranks pages with fast mobile performance scores higher, so you need a high score to improve your page’s SEO. Studies have confirmed that users value speed over anything else, and page performance is tied directly to bounce rates, user satisfaction, conversion rates, and revenue.