Google loves fast websites, and for a long time now, its PageSpeed Insights tool has been an easy way to surface potential speed bumps in a site’s design and setup. This tool, however, always lived in a relatively obscure area of Google’s Developer site, so to give it a bit more exposure, Google has now integrated it into Google Analytics. There, Analytics users can now find a new Speed Suggestions report in the Content tab on the sidebar.
Given that Google Analytics already tracked the load time of all the pages on a site, the combination of PageSpeed Insights and Analytics adds a new dimension to the original reports. Instead of just seeing the PageSpeed score, you can now see exactly how this score influences loading times on your site, too.
Sadly, the integration is not as deep as running the PageSpeed report right in Analytics, however. While Google Analytics shows you the PageSpeed score for each one of your site’s pages and the number of suggestions for improving it, you still need to run the report on the original Insights page to get the actual results and suggestions.
The suggestions are obviously the most important part of this project. For most sites, Google will likely recommend using the browser cache more aggressively, eliminating render-blocking JavaScript and optimizing or compressing images.
