Dark pattern pet peeve once you complete the test. The options are either:
Yes, send me my report and occasional emails with helpful
tips on how to improve my online presence. Google may send
me recommendations for certain Google products and services
and contact me with further help and tips based on my
TestMySite results.
Or:
No thanks, I don’t want to get my detailed results.
What if I want to get my results, but not subscribe to your marketing drip campaign?
I assumed that the detailed report would probably have more information about the "what to fix" shown on the page in sections, and also "how to fix" with relevant snippets on the web page. If that's not the case, I don't see why a detailed report is even there.
I did not opt for a detailed report because it requires an email address and defaults to opt-in for additional communications. It's really a terrible dark pattern. I wonder who even thought that this would be acceptable.
This "detailed report" is quite lacking in detail compared to the Pagespeed it's apparently going to replace, because pagespeed at least lists the pages it's upset about.
Only by viewing the old tool can I see that what it's actually complaining about, is the CDN configuration for Google analytics.
I wish these Google tools would at least recognise people following their own instructions and not punish them accordingly.
But then again, providing the user with a unique shareable URL would be much better for the user.
And, this is just my own opinion[1], obviously, but, providing the best user experience possible, whether designing a new Internet browser or a new tweak to the look of the homepage is very important. It is wise to take great care to ensure that services will ultimately serve the user, rather than the provider's internal goal or bottom line. When building new tools and applications, they should work so well you don’t have to consider how they might have been designed differently.
I ran it on a tiny static 99.9% text-only site that finishes loading in 0.15s, a full 0.1s of which is a 1.5KB creative commons graphic, and google knocks 9 points off on mobile because I don't defer the 8ms request for 374 bytes of CSS? Seems arbitrary.
I only see 79/100 mobile friendliness for google.com (tried two times with same results).
The screenshot shows some text among the lines of "We're sorry... ...but your computer or network may be sending automated queries. [...]". It looks like some kind of abuse/DoS protection was triggered.
PageSpeed, which this is based on, uses a relative metric last I checked. I.E. If you have a 2 byte site and can remove 1 byte, you'd get ~50 points off.
It's not quite that simple, but that's the basic idea.
Counterpoint, there's no reason to uglify something simple and clean by copy-pasting CSS into it to just to shave the remaining hairs off the dog's balls* when we already have a nice interface for read-once-use-everywhere references.
* - I don't know if that's a real expression. It doesn't even seem to fit, but I like it so I'mma keep it.
I do it for sizes less than 10KB (completely arbitrary) for most websites because the fact of the matter is that most websites don't get repeat visits often, and visitors rarely visit more than the page/article they arrived at.
There's no point making all visitors cache a CSS file when only a tiny minority will need it.
Note that I live in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so HTTP round-trip times are terrible for most users. If you're on a first-world connection, it shouldn't matter as much.
It doesn't necessarily have to be about size. The goal is to let the browser paint the above-the-fold content without any external round-trips. Using the least possible seams sensible, especially if you do it on every page. This lets caching work as intended for the majority of the CSS.
This is exactly why I stopped using page speed insights for testing. The last time I used it, which was at least a year ago, I was losing points for serving too large an image file size on mobile. Only problem was I use converting to webp 'on the fly' with mobile browsers.
I could kind of get it if webp was an apple or ms solution but it isn't??
It's always going to be arbitrary to have an absolute measure given the diversity of sites. Large/slow images are going to be normal for photography sites for example but worth knocking points off for coding sites. You're better off using it as a relative measure to see if the same site is improving when you make changes.
The PageSpeed Insights[0] tool is better. Less scrolling to see results, actionable steps to fix issues and no scroll hijacking. Also seems to scan websites quicker.
Speaking to some of the Google developers and the head of mobile web performance - not even Google use their own tool as a measure / benchmark for performance. PageSpeed Insights is both broken and convoluted at best.
- No support for HTTP/2
-- This means that if you follow all the "right" approaches for performance with HTTP/2, you'll be slapped with a terrible PageSpeed score due to it not taking into account the effect of multi plexing connections.
- Has constant bugs around determining the flow of assets on the page and thinks that assets at the bottom become render blocking when they do not
Google tend to use a combination of their own tooling + WebPageTest.org (which is also theirs) to test performance issues.
This tool is mainly geared at the non-developer type, but it's unfortunately misleading and just wrong. It doesn't measure speed, it measures performance methodologies and whether they have been implemented or not (and old ones at that).
The more important metrics are time to paint, time to domcontentready. Using WebPageTest will get you what you want. I find it pretty offensive and misleading that Google is using such a tool and promoting it to users, because frankly it misses the entire point of performance.
Things like this:
"Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content" when you're running an H/2 site with an appcache and pushing assets is just downright wrong.
It's sad that there's a general miscommunication within the company about performance. Ilya Gregorik and co say one thing, and the rest say another.
Mobile Friendly(MF) is worse than PageSpeed Insights(PSI) in every possible (perceivable) way:
- PSI is fast. MF is slow.
- PSI is general (mobile and desktop). MF is, well, for mobile.
- PSI just asks for the site, gives you results. MF checks if you're a robot, you check a site, and checks again you're not a robot if you want to use it again.
- PSI gives you exactly what's wrong with your site, which rules were broken, and how to fix them. Which lines to add to your CSS. Where to add them (deferring loading CSS if you want to, adding JavaScript), and gives you a score for each thing, if you change stuff you can look at your score improve. It then orients you to resources for additional reading. MF is binary: good, not good. Doesn't give you info. Doesn't give you actionable info. Gives you basically nothing.
I don't see any reason to use MF (or for it to even exist under its current form and non-features) and every reason to use PSI. Then again, every time I discover a Google product, after a few days I have the misfortune of seeing a red warning telling me it'll be discontinued. It's happened many times.
If it provides the scores I'm assuming it also has detailed information on how those scores were calculated. Why not provide the detailed results right away instead of collecting emails. Every time I see "Get Something Free" or something similar my bullshit meter starts peaking right away.
It'd be nice if they let me sign in with my Google account, so I can generate multiple reports without having to repeatedly type in my email. It seems reasonable to assume that anyone that uses a tool like this would likely have multiple pages or sites they'd want to check, no?
I tested reddit (which I hate using on mobile), and it got a Poor 63/100 for speed while high marks for mobile optimization. I guess it's a perfect representation of many SPAs out there. Fancy JS frameworks that are built for mobile, but it takes 10s+ to load if you're not on Wifi/4G.
Ironically this site does not work correctly for me on my phone. On the latest stable safari and iOS version the field to enter your email to get the report is missing. No ad blockers enabled etc...
This means any CSS or JS that delays ("blocks") rendering of "above-the-fold content" (content you see immediately - before scrolling) should be removed or made non-blocking.
Screenshot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/csm6j5u9hq5wubw/Screenshot%202017-...