With Google’s emphasis on Core Web Vitals as a key ranking factor, people are rightly concerned about website performance. This is a good thing, as a faster website provides a better user experience, and if it leads to better search engine rankings as well, then everybody wins. Investing in website performance optimization is a no-brainer—to a point.

Google provides a free tool to measure your website’s performance called PageSpeed Insights.It will run a series of simulations of both desktop and mobile traffic, and give you a score from 0 to 100 for each, along with tips for how you can improve your score. This is valuable and useful info, to be sure, but it is just one data point, and we don’t recommend putting too much emphasis on it.

We often hear from people who are concerned that their mobile score, in particular, is too low, and ask what we can do to improve the score. Our advice is that it is better to focus on improving performance generally, and not sweat too much about earning a specific score on this one test. And here are three big reasons why:

• First, the mobile PageSpeed score is derived from a simulation of dated hardware running on a less-than-optimal mobile network. It isn’t a very accurate simulation of current mobile hardware or modern high speed connections. Technology moves quickly, but the PageSpeed mobile simulation has not been updated in years. For real-world users, your mobile site is likely performing much better than the PageSpeed score suggests.
• Second, Google paradoxically penalizes your PageSpeed score if you use other Google products such as Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, or Google AdWords. And guess what—nearly every single one of our clients uses all those tools. If you don’t believe me, try removing these Google scripts from your site and test with PageSpeed Tools again. Your score will go up significantly, but at what cost to your business? These other Google products are essential to running a business online, so removing them is typically not practical.
• Third, some of the commonly suggested performance improvements might earn a few points on the PageSpeed score, but they do so at the cost of hampering the user experience of your site. One example is deferring JavaScript execution until the user interacts with the page. Yes, this can raise your score a few points. But depending on the nature of your site, it might also make the web page ineffective or confusing for users, if it isn’t loading important content until you actually touch the screen. Steps like this need to be tested and evaluated on a case-by-case basis. What works for one site, or even one web page, may be unacceptable on another.

So do we think you should ignore PageSpeed Insights? Absolutely not. We just think there’s no need to obsess or get stressed out over it. We also believe that there are better tools available to measure website performance.

Our favorite alternative to PageSpeed Insights is GTMetrix. We find GTMetrix to be superior and more useful than PageSpeed Insights in every way. The GTMetrix advantages we find most useful are:

• Configurable Testing: GTMetrix allows you to specify what type of browser, what type of hardware, and what type of connection you’d like to simulate. In addition, you can choose a physical location you’d like to test from. These options, some of which are free and some of which are available only to Pro users, allow for the ability to more closely simulate a typical modern user vs. the ‘lowest common denominator’ mobile user that PageSpeed Insights simulates.
• Highly Detailed Recommendations: GTMetrix provides a wealth of highly detailed, highly actionable optimization suggestions which are far more useful than the more broad and general advice offered by PageSpeed Insights. Further, GTMetrix provides excellent granular data about how exactly your web page loads, which can reveal highly specific optimization opportunities that are simply not highlighted by PageSpeed Insights at all.
• Test History: GTMetrix helpfully retains a testing history of your page. This is not only helpful in the near term, as you test different optimization strategies. But it is invaluable down the road, as your site grows and evolves. Want to know if a new plugin you added is adversely impacting performance? All the data is right there for you in GTMetrix.

For the reasons outlined above, our approach to website performance optimization centers on testing with GTMetrix instead of PageSpeed Insights. We work methodically through all suggestions provided by GTMetrix, and act on everything that is practical for the site at hand. Generally, this does result in high scores across both tools. But if the mobile score on PageSpeed Insights is lacking, and it almost always trails the desktop score, we don’t worry too much about it.

The goal of website performance optimization is to maximize page speed as much as possible, while still providing a good user experience. The quirks of one specific testing tool should not be given too much emphasis when there are better, more comprehensive testing tools readily available.