To start let us recall, PageSpeed Insights (PSI) – a specially developed by Google, to check the speed of loading pages on the website, both on the desktop version and smartphones. According to the world search engine, are offered three “color zones”:
- green – isn’t found any problems. Excellent!
- yellow – it is better to fix it if it isn’t too difficult;
- red – if it is correct, the page will load much faster.
Also, this service provides advice, what you should exactly do to optimize loading of pages. For example – to compress images size, move and/or compress Javascript, etc. We take into account all the parameters in advance to the project received only green zone in output. 2017 brought a number of changes, and “green” sites turned up at the Google disfavor.
What has changed in PageSpeed Insights 2017
Almost at the new year, Google strongly recommends “compressing”. More specifically, to compress all images. to a maximum. Google ward – webpagetest.org has been offering a so-called “lossy compression” for a long time, with the level of quality up to 50%. And then, finally, the corporation has decided to adopt a similar policy of compression – and on December 12, 2016, threw gift under the Christmas tree for site owners and developers – instead of the Santa’s red bag, red zone on PageSpeed. Previously Google approved compressed images (mostly compressed lossless or quality loss level of less than 50%) Google approved, so by a new opinion of the company, the sites should «lose weight» more, mainly due to the visual elements.
Will PSI cause to say goodbye to high-quality images?
Not just us, but the whole world of web-community, concerned about what will happen with the image quality, in connection with the PSI innovations. For online clothing stores, or business card websites, or photographers and moviemakers business card websites, the question of image quality loss is critical. Whatever it was, do not panic. The offer of “compression with quality loss ” was made long ago and taken into general use only a month ago. Severe, at first sight, measures Google does not tends to push us into a trap, but only trying to encourage developers to use the latest tools to achieve the best results in the speed of providing content. The era of new features has come, developers get access to many tools and modules for processing images.
For example, Tinypng, the tool allows you to compress the image three or more times, with no visible damage the image quality. Over time, we’ll know, is it enough for Google to raise the website to the green zone again. So, like everyone else, waiting for the web-based tools, providing optimization and compression services, adapt to new demands and be able to provide us with the resources to build web projects quickly and conveniently.
How to protect yourself from the red zone?
We complete the projects based on the development standards. And we deliver only the high-quality products, ready for optimization. It’s unknown what other innovations will search engines come up to make life easier for ordinary users. One thing is clear – if it’s smth new in Google algorithms, that as a result impact on the rankings issue, it affects all Web sites, and get into the red zone, not only you. The question is only to monitor changes and promptly respond to them. After all, the market of information technologies – is perhaps the most rapidly changing.
