Google has released a new version of PageSpeed Insights, its Chrome extension that analyzes site performance.
Libo Song and Bryan McQuade of Google’s PageSpeed Insights Team write in a joint blog post, “PageSpeed Insights for Chrome is a Developer Tools extension that analyzes all aspects of the page load, including resources, network, DOM, and the timeline. If you’re already familiar with the Developer Tools, you’ll find that PageSpeed Insights integrates with a toolset you’re already using.”
“Using technologies like Native Client, PageSpeed Insights is able to run the open-source PageSpeed Insights SDK securely and with the performance of native code,” says the duo. “Leveraging the Insights SDK enables the Chrome extension to automatically optimize the images, CSS, JavaScript and HTML resources on your web page and provide versions of those resources that you can easily deploy on your website.”
Here’s an hour-long presentation about the tool from last year:
According to the Chrome Web Store, PageSpeed Insights has 84,215 users.
Google has said in the past that speed is a ranking factor in Google, though Google’s Matt Cutts has downplayed how often it really makes a huge difference. Either way, a slow site will only hurt your reputation and annoy users. You only have something to gain by making it faster.
Google recently launched a new site speed report in Google Analytics called User Timings to track custom timings, and show the execution speed or load time of any hit, event or user interaction.