Posts Tagged ‘speed’

Give Your Site a Speed Boost with the New Google Page Speed Service

Friday, August 12th, 2011

A couple weeks ago Google announced a new Page Speed Service which is currently available to only a limited number of webmasters. The new Page Speed service follows many previous speed assessment products that Google has released over the years, releases that include the Page Speed Browser Add-ons and Page Speed Online. These previous releases focused on scoring a websites speed performance and providing users with suggestions or feedback to increase their speed score.

page speed logo

from http://code.google.com/speed/pss/index.html, August 2011

The new Page Speed is a service that doesn’t analyze your website’s speed but instead automatically increases it. The new service retrieves your content from the website server, rewrites the website using their specified guidelines, and then delivers it the site visitor even faster using their servers.

While using the Page Speed Service a website can expect to see a 25%-60% improvement however the exact amount of speed depends on a number of different factors. These factors include the amount of content on your pages, the browser, geographical location, bandwidth and more. Visit the web page test to analyze your website and determine the exact speed increase that the new page speed service can produce for your website.

The test works by simply visiting your site and then repeating the same test by substituting your website into the Page Speed Service. The test takes only minutes to perform and once complete the user is presented with a chart that details the load time from the original server, the load time from the Page Speed Service, the load time for repeat visits from both servers, the percentage of the speed increase, and multiple links to test details. The results also provide a visual rendering for the two speeds that clearly demonstrate to the user the exact amount of speed that they can expect to gain by using the Google Page Speed Service.

Visit the link to request to participate in the new Page Speed Trial.

How to use the Service:

  • Log into the Google APIs Console.
  • Provide the serving domain of the website you want to speed up.
  • Verify ownership of the domain through Google Webmaster Central.
  • At this stage, you will have an opportunity to preview how your site will look when rendered through the Page Speed Service.
  • Set up and provide the reference domain from where Page Speed Service will fetch your website content.
  • Change your site’s DNS CNAME entry and start using Page Speed Service to serve traffic to your users.
  • Monitor traffic and latency metrics for your web site from the Dashboard

Currently Google is offering this service free of charge to a limited number of users. At the conclusion of the trial period later this year the product will be available to everyone at a competitive price.

When performing a web page test for our own website we were able to see a 29% increase in our speed. For the best results we recommend using a combination of Google Page Speed online to determine how to reduce your website’s load time and the Page Speed Service to get an extra speed boost.

For more information visit the Page Speed Service FAQ.

Thanks for Reading and Have a Great Day!

Dustin

ComputerFitness.com

Providing Tech Support for Businesses in Maryland

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Using Google Page Speed to Improve Your Website’s Performance

Friday, April 15th, 2011

Recently we published an article on our internet marketing blog detailing various techniques for increasing the speed of a website.  In our posting “Simple Modifications That Produce a Faster Website and Boost Rankings!” we provided statistics on what qualifies as a fast website and several suggestions that could potentially increase a website’s loading time.  Some of these suggestions included website compression, image optimization, and properly structuring website code.

Each of these methods carries critical importance when attempting to enhance a website page speed.   Website compression groups information and sends it using packets of data which mean more information is sent at one time and does not continuously flow item by item.  Limiting and optimizing images avoids clutter and reduces the time the images take to display. Ensuring proper code layout also increase page speed because the page knows what elements to load first therefore keeping the visitor occupied and aware that the site is functioning properly until fully loaded.

It is important to first check the speed of your website using one of the many page testing tools found on the internet.  Some of the tools are Pingdom Load Time Test and GTmtrix, however recently Google has launched its very own tool called Page Speed Online.

Page Speed Online was released on March 31, 2011 and was previously available only as a browser add-on.  Google Labs newest launch now enables users to test the speed or load time of any website from any location.  Google Online Page Speed is simple and convenient to use and provides an immediate review of your site and its speed.  To use Google’s website speed assessment tool all a user has to do is as follows:

  1. Navigate to the Page Speed Online Test Screen.
  2. Enter the URL of the website and click “Analyze Performance”.
  3. Once the test initiates the result will appear in a few moments and will provide a score out of 100.
  4. Provided under the score are any problems that were found on your site. These problems will be broken down into priority categories of high, medium, and low.
  5. The problems listed in these categories are basic errors that have a negative effect on the speed of your site, for example it could say “Optimize Images”.  Each of the problems listed can be accessed for a more detail description of each individual error.  When a user clicks “Optimize Images” the results will identify each individual picture that needs to be optimized and provide the best solutions to do so.
  6. Follow the solutions provided to eliminate any problems that were found during the initial test and try re-testing your website once the solution has been implemented.

The good thing about using Google’s online page speed application as opposed to other online speed assessments is that Google’s test appears to be more accurate. Google provides the user with suggestions to fix the problems that were found during the screening process.  People who utilize other online speed testing programs might receive inaccurate result because they may be only testing the time that it takes for your websites HTML to transfer.  Google however not only tests the HTML transfer but also measures how long it takes for images to load and how long it takes to execute JavaScript.  The Google Page speed test incorporates all of these factors and more when screening your website and provides a fuller assessment of your site speed.

In conclusion with the Google online page speed test users can instantly assess their site speed from any computer or browser and clearly identify every aspect that they should improve.  The Google online page speed tool is simple to use and provides informative feedback that could assist you in drastically increasing the speed of your website.

You can try out this great tool at Google Page Speed Online!

Please share your opinion below about what you think of Google Page Speed. Will you be using it or do you already have another site speed tool that you think is better?

Thanks for Reading and Have a Great Day!

Dustin

ComputerFitness.com

Providing Tech Support for Businesses in Maryland

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How to Give your Microsoft Outlook a quick Speed Boost!

Friday, February 18th, 2011

When it comes to using a personal information manager like Microsoft Outlook it becomes very easy to accumulate too much data.  In turn, this build up of information which includes emails, contacts, reminders, or personal notes can often become too much for the system to handle.

Microsoft Outlook 2007

Trademark of Microsoft Corporation

As we use Outlook more and more files and folders are created leading to a decrease in the speed of our Microsoft Outlook Center.  Stand alone Outlook uses a PST file name extension, also known as a Personal Storage Table file, which is locally stored on your computer.  When these files begin to grow they cause Outlook to exert extra effort in order to refresh and open older archived files.

There are several things a user can do in an effort to re-capture the speed of Outlook.  Among the options to ensure that Outlook continues to work properly and efficiently is clearing away unused files, disabling add-ins, and removing the RSS feed.

Taking out the garbage:

First it is best to start by going through all of your emails or messages to see which ones you no longer need.  Once you are finished deleting the unnecessary files you might already recognize an increase in performance.

Spread out the data:

Once you are finished clearing out the old files it is important to further thin out your folders.  In Outlook 2003/2007 you can create a new folder or subfolder by clicking File, New, and New Folder. (In Outlook 2010 Support new folders can be created by going to Home, New Items, More Items, and Outlook Data File.)  After establishing new folders reorganize your emails, messages, or reminders so that the information is not all located within the same folder.

Manage your inbox:

Similar to the previous tip, managing your Inbox means that once you are finished reading new messages you should move them to a different folder or delete them.  The Inbox folder is the most commonly used folder in Outlook and continuously receives more data.  Due to the constant feed of incoming messages the Inbox folder populates the fastest and can bog down the program if left unmanaged.

Consider reducing the security:

Who would have thought too much security would be a bad thing.  Your anti-spam preferences take time to sort through emails and slow down your Outlook operations.  Although it is not advised to remove your security entirely, it may be possible to lessen your security precautions to provide a faster response time.

Remove the RSS Feed:

If you do not use the RSS Feed, disable it.  In order to remove it, access the Tools menu, select Account Settings, RSS Feed, and click Remove.

Disable the Add-ins:

Similar to the RSS Feed you can disable any unused Add-ins by accessing the Trust center found under the Tools drop down menu. Add-ins are good only if you are getting use out of them, to increase Outlook’s performance, disable any of your Add-ins that are dormant.

Backup or Archive your information:

If these options don’t offer much help and you still have way too much data slowing down your Outlook, you may want to consider transferring your files to an external hard drive or setting up an Archive folder for email older than 6 months (click Tools, Options, Other, Auto Archive).  Backing up your files is a good idea and could prevent data loss or corruption.  In this situation using a backup will not only protect important files it will increase the speed and performance of Microsoft Outlook.

Check out more information on Microsoft Outlook at the Microsoft Outlook Resource Center!

Have a Great Day!

Dustin

ComputerFitness.com

Providing Tech Support for Businesses in Maryland

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Posted in Browser Modifications, Software, Web Tips | No Comments »