Mat ^✍️ » Andrew
thanks, I know speed matters. It was specifically about whether I can ignore scores in the teens on Google’s tool because the site gets good ratings on GTmetrix.
One or two people selling page speed services have said it doesn’t matter what Google’s Tool says, as long as GTmetrix says it is good. Just doesn’t feel right.
Andrew » Mat
yeah that's nonsense. Google PageSpeed Insights key metrics are super actionable and with some work can quite easily be improved if you go through the recommendations. You'll notice a big gain in loading speed and perceived loading time as you improve them. Start with switching images to .webp as it'll make a big difference and lazy loading them too. Then prerendering and font display, then refactoring CSS and JavaScript. For CSS, https://rbtech.github.io/css-purge/ is useful and for webp conversion XnConvert has worked for me but there are other systematic ways of converting images to next gen formats that scale better
CSS-PURGE ~ Helping you burn that extra CSS off
RBTECH.GITHUB.IO
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Mat ^✍️ » Andrew
thanks for the great information. We have a developer who can custom code websites but he doesn’t know how to speed them up, or maybe he is too busy on other stuff to learn it. I think we will pay someone to do it as I am pretty clueless about code and whatnot, but I will certainly read your link and take on board your other info. Cheers 👍
Andrew » Mat
no problem. Have your guy check out https://web.dev too as loads of resources on speeding sites up on there.

Mat ^✍️
Thanks Kevin. This page doesn't mention GTmetrix. Please can you explain why it is not very good? Is it that GTmetrix doesn't address Core Web Vitals? Is Google's Tool the main one I should be looking at?
Makes sense to me that Google's Tool should be the most important as they make the rules for their algorithm. But we have been told to ignore it by people who sell speed optimization as a service.
Kevin » Mat
the page was for an explanation of what google considers. I should have been more clear. Apologies.
Re GTmetrix, we ran several comparison tests across 4 tools and GTmetrix gave overly optimistic scores on site speed and several core web vital metrix.
We use 3 tools Page Speed Insights as an initial diagnostic tool, and Lighthouse plus WebPageTest.org for deeper analysis.
This is what’s worked for us over the past 5 years.
I think people who say use one tool only are wrong. I also think that people who say ignore the Google tools are also wrong.
There are also additional tools used by dev teams to refactor and improve code besides testing server speeds and so on.
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Mat ^✍️
Awesome information Kevin, thanks for sharing.
I know about Core Web Vitals and have been explaining it to clients. It has just put a spanner in the works that at least one of the services we tried said to forget about Google's Tool and just look at GTmetrix, when I had already pointed out client's slow speeds using Google's Tool i.e. they are expecting an increase in the score if we get someone to speed up their site. Will try another service.
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Kevin » Mat
you are most welcome. If I find more information I’ll post and share 😊
Kevin » Mat
https://backlinko.com/hub/seo/core-web-vitals
Core Web Vitals: What They Are & How to Improve Them
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Kevin » Mat
and https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9205520?hl=en. Be aware that Google sets targets
Core Web Vitals report – Search Console Help
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Mat ^✍️
I often put off reading his articles as they are long 😜but will read it now. And the 2nd you also added. Thanks 👍
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Mat ^✍️
That is exactly what I think too. But we have been trying speed optimization services and they say different.
We used two services. One has a page loading in 10 seconds on GTmetrix with A scores (but it loads faster in reality). Then on Google's tool the page scores 16/100. The other service got Google's scores in the 90s, but it broke various things on the website and I think we had to basically undo what they did. But I believe they were saying something similar about ignoring Google's Tool.
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Eric » Mat
yeah, there are a number of factors that will affect page speed scores… where the server is that’s pinging you, what they use as a benchmark, etc… But no bot can substitute for user experience. If you serve up your desktop site in 2ish seconds and mobile site in 3ish, you should be able to focus your efforts on other more important factors without a seeing any significant negative impact from page speed.
Obviously, the faster the better. Especially for eCommerce sites.

Mat ^✍️
That sounds logical, at least for now.
On GTmetrix the page load time varies and is 10 seconds at the moment, for fully loaded. But it gets very good scores for everything else.
On Google's Tool it gets 23/100 at the moment (was 16 earlier) and the Largest Contentful Paint (not sure if this is the best metric to use) is 21.7 seconds.
Because the page loads fast on incognito mode on desktop (seems fairly instant but I think desktop isn't as important) and gets good GTmetrix scores, we are being told it is fast. For me, it's more like 5 seconds on mobile, but I don't know if I have a slow internet connection and whether I should be trusting the tools more than just my phone. Confusing. Just doesn't feel right at all to me that the site definitely takes longer than 3 seconds on my phone and has terrible scores on Google's Tool.
Would you say Largest Contentful Paint is the most important metric on Google's Tool?
Lime » Mat
Yes and No, In a way how I look and evaluate sites is how fast they load, I use google dev tools in the network section to evaluate what's loading I am surprised why your website is taking 21 seconds to load. When I design and make sites I try to have them fully loaded in the view port less than 2 seconds and UX. Imagine typing google.com and you have to wait until 21 seconds for the website to show or even 5 seconds because naturally how we are all used to browsing after typing url we want to see the website… that's it…
Please note, I am not saying what google page speed or GTmetrix says is wrong, By any means if you can implement all the suggestions they give you like deferring java script serving http2 or serving scaled images optimize images etc but your primary goal should be to look at fully load time to be less than 2 seconds instead of what score you achieve.
I am not an expert have been learning for a while and learnt a lot of things along the way, Fast website less javascript, semantic and effective html code, lazy loading wherever possible, to achive website speed. I was previously using Elementor to design WordPress sites but now using oxygen builder and it works very nicely though there is a huge learning curve but once you get the hang of it. Its a breeze to work with. do you have a url of your website I may suggest a few changes to speed it up…
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Lime » Johnson
That's not what I meant, What I say is follow google or GTmetrix all you want however primary focus should be number of seconds your website loads instead of running after getting perfect scores on GTmetrix or Google PageSpeed. For example lets say I make a website and first page is having only one div and one image inside of it no menu no Javascript the image is lets say Full width properly scaled and optimized size it 2 MB. now that will give me a perfect score on GTmetrix or google page speed but the website will load in more than 2 seconds on mobile because of huge image size… hence in order to reduce bounce rate I would focus on the reducing the time first instead of aiming for perfect scores. because for google it does not matter how smooth the animations on your website are or how beautiful your website looks google bot reads the code it should be good fast effective and meaningful for google to serve to its huge customer base…. Hope I was able to explain to you. English is not my first language though I try 🙂