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One of the many issues that confront the average Webmaster is how to boost site speed and performance. This is a very important issue because Internet speed varies across the globe and Web users are not always very patient when surfing the Web. Not everyone can afford to wait for 5 minutes in order to view a simple Web page. A slow Website is therefore a turn off and could potentially lead to loosing some of the few visitors you already have.
Although there are many expensive software programs out there that can assist a site owner with analysing and managing Web pages, there are also some very good and free tools that can be used to evaluate the speed of your Website. This post will take a look at some of these free speed tools to help you make up your mind depending on your preferences.
Page Speed
Page speed is an open source Firefox/Firebug add-on that evaluates the performance of Web pages and gives suggestions on how improvements can be made. It is affiliated to Google and performs several tests on a site’s server configuration and front-end code to increase the general speed of your Website and save some extra bandwidth and hosting costs.
Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools shows the speed of your Website as experienced by users, in comparison with other Websites across the globe. I recommend using this tool if you have not yet done so because it provides accurate results that could well be the motivation you need to actually try and improve your site speed. To access the tool, log on to your Google Webmaster site, click on the Labs tab and proceed to Site performance.
YSlow
The Yahoo! YSlow is a Firefox add-on integrated with the Firebug Web development tool. It analyses Web pages and suggests ways to improve their performance based on a set of rules for high performance Web pages. It also summarises the pages components, display their statistics and provide tools for performance analysis such as Sumsh.it and JSLint.
Zoompf
Zoompf is one of the least known site performance tools on the Internet. It provides a free scan and tells you how to make your website faster by crawling your Website in search of over 300 specific problems associated with slow performing sites.
WebPageTest
WebPageTest conducts test on submitted Web sites from the Internet and provides a waterfall of your page load performance as well as a comparison against an optimisation check-list. There is also a desktop version of the PageTest tool which could be beneficial for those who want to test a Web page inside a firewall.
Talking Point
Do you know of any other free speed tools?
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Logo Design
May 15, 2010 at 9:05 am
Amazing article post it great tool for me.
Thanks.
Traveler Club
May 16, 2010 at 11:33 am
very complete info thanks for sharing
.-= Traveler Club´s last blog ..Technorati Claim =-.
Admin
May 16, 2010 at 9:47 pm
Thanks for your contribution guys.
Domain dame registration
May 18, 2010 at 6:58 am
Website speed is now one of the thing Google want to be using to rank website and webpage. It s very important to speed up your website an webpage to get good ranking.
Goose
May 18, 2010 at 5:59 pm
Great article! I stopped by from blogcatalog and am very impressed with the depth of your articles. Thanks!
.-= Goose´s last blog ..ISS and the Crescents =-.
Admin
September 13, 2010 at 1:48 pm
Cheers Goose. BlogCatalog is really a good place to find other bloggers 🙂
Zoompf
May 24, 2010 at 8:11 pm
I’m glad you like Zoompf’s free web performance scanning service! We are always adding more performance tests and trying to improve the site. Please feel free to send us feedback at [email protected] or on Twitter @zoompf.
You can use our free service at: http://zoompf.com/free
Thanks for the kind words!
c
August 27, 2010 at 8:01 am
I am using WordPress super cache is their anthing better thats beenspeed tested for blogs.
Man I didn’t know half the tools that were available I know what you do all day, research!
FHA Home Loans
February 22, 2011 at 4:48 pm
Page Speed is a great resource to utilize to check your website. I will have to check out the others that you provide here. Thank you for the information.
peak
March 1, 2011 at 4:15 pm
there are lots of other site talking about this matter, but your article makes the most sense. keep up the good work!
Nieruchomości Szczecin
April 12, 2011 at 8:33 am
So thats means wordpress and short posts with anchor links is not enought to achieve good positions in google?
Wózki do sprzątania
April 30, 2011 at 1:30 pm
This tool is free of pay? If not, I would to ask for more informations about how its working. Could You give me some link to guide?
Masaż Szczecin
April 30, 2011 at 1:35 pm
Hi,
It is true that Google will ban your site if you make too many anchors, or it is a legend? Someone can tell me?
Indoor golf simulator
May 3, 2011 at 12:55 pm
Very helpful tools. Thanks for suggesting these.
Classifieds
May 6, 2011 at 3:22 pm
i’m going to have to get this ff add on now. it looks really handy. good list of tools here!
Christopher Fuller
June 29, 2011 at 10:55 pm
This is exactly what I need. I have a couple of sites that are streaming video via Amazon S3 and the load time is appaling. Typically, I am getting nowhere when talking to my hosting company. I will try Yslow and Pagespeed and see where it gets me. Thanks
Janis Gagliardi
July 17, 2011 at 4:48 pm
So far webmaster tool is one of the best tools I’ve come across. Its important to know about the performance of your site and make the necessary improvements in order to keep your visitors satisfied. The tools mentioned here sounds great but I’ve not tried most of the tools.
Dan
July 30, 2011 at 9:48 pm
Really good information. I’ve read that site loading speed can effect your rankings. Is this true? Thanks!
Jamie
August 18, 2011 at 8:56 pm
Thanks for sharing! I’m glad to have been able to view this article. It’s a fantastic blog, and the community encourages response.
Teake van der meer
September 18, 2011 at 11:18 am
It is even more important now because Google uses your page speed in the algorithm.
Having a slow page could make the difference between 1st and 2nd place.
Great list!
Danny
September 19, 2011 at 6:16 am
I believe it is just a very very small part of the equation in Googles algorithm, but nonetheless it is important, if not for Google, then do it for the most important factor of your website: Your visitors.
Nothing as annoying as a slow website, maybe a not working website… 🙂
Jerryl
October 3, 2011 at 7:04 am
All of these tools are useful and important. I used google webmaster because all my sites were hosted in blogspot cause its free. Thanks for sharing this information.
Karen
November 18, 2011 at 8:24 am
Out of the options listed above, webmaster tools is what I have mastered. This tool is very useful. But it is also necessary to comply the TOS of this or else you will get banned.
jim
November 28, 2011 at 1:26 am
I like the tools for webpage speed. that is something I have really gotten focused on lately. I really think that has a lot to do with a positive user experience. And of course Google takes that into consideration for ranking.
Sophia
November 29, 2012 at 5:03 am
That’s really a very useful to increase the speed of website,I have need a lot of info about it,I am waiting your next post,thnx…………………………………………….
Wayne
October 26, 2019 at 6:39 am
Great, thanks! I just used these on my site and it helped a ton