We get at least an email or two a week from people frantically looking to improve their Google Page Speed Insights score. Regardless of what you may have heard, the actual score your website achieves from Google Page Speed Insights is really not all that important.
What’s important is that your website loads quickly.
Google created Page Speed Insights because it detected a direct correlation between the responsiveness and speed of a website (how quickly it loads and functions) and the bounce rate (the number of people who leave a website right away). The slower the website, the higher the bounce rate.
Google sells advertising and like most media companies, it needs to show that the money a company spends on advertising is money well spent. If a user clicks on a Google ad, but immediately leaves the target site, there’s no conversion. Lots of non-conversions hurt the perceived Return on Investment (ROI).
Page Speed Insights was developed to help websites identify and fix issues that are slowing down websites and thus hurting the ROI with ANY online advertising (including Google AdWords).
And in that sense, it’s a really great tool. It quickly and easily gives you some feedback on the speed of your website and some information about what might be slowing it down. Google has admitted that page speed factors into its organic search algorithm. Notice that I said page speed, not Page Speed Insights score.
So the score itself isn’t as important as the actual speed of your website. The score is simply a way to help you evaluate and improve the speed of your website.
