Google has announced a new Labs feature in Google Webmaster Tools designed to track page load speed. The new Site Performance tool is one part tracking and stats tool, and one part Firefox add-on.The tracking and stats can be accessed through the Labs menu in Google Webmaster Tools. To get the live profiling add-on, you’ll need to be using Firefox and have the Firebug add-on installed. Yes, like Yahoo’s YSlow add-on, Google’s Page Speed add-on injects some extra profiling tools into the Firebug panel.
These days, nearly everyone has a blog or a website they maintain. Popular publishing systems like WordPress, Movable Type and Blogger do a decent job of keeping your sites slim, but once you load up a complicated theme and add a few widgets, your page load times can start to take a substantial hit. Google’s new set of tools, along with similar tools like Yahoo’s YSlow, are powerful and full-featured, making them a must for large-scale site developers. But they are also easy to install and simple enough to use that even bloggers and small site builders should gain plenty of insight from the data they provide.
To get the new tools, install the Firebug add-on and head to the Site Performance section of Google Webmaster Tools. At the bottom of the page you’ll see a button to install the new Firefox plugin. Once installed, head to your site, click the Firebug icon and look for two new tabs: Page Speed and Page Speed Activity.
Click on Page Speed and run the tool and you’ll get a list of potential speed killers. For example are you using image compression? How about minifying JavaScript and CSS? The handy part is that Page Speed offers links to minified and compressed version of your files.
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