Improving Page Speed in Google Sites

Page speed is no longer just a "nice to have." It's essential for keeping visitors engaged and plays a key role in how Google ranks your site. A slow site feels unprofessional and costs you visitors. While Google Sites is a simple platform, it's surprisingly easy to create a slow page by accident. The #1 culprit is almost always none or poorly optimised content. This guide will show you how to find the issues and, most importantly, how to fix them.

Before you can fix anything, you need a baseline. We'll use two free and powerful tools for this:

1. Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI): This is Google's own tool. It gives you scores for both Mobile and Desktop and focuses on "Core Web Vitals," which are the key metrics Google uses to measure user experience.

2. GTmetrix: This tool provides incredibly detailed reports and grades, showing you exactly which files are loading and how long they take.

How to Use Them: Simply go to each site, paste in your published Google Site URL (e.g., https://sites.google.com/view/your-site), and run the test.

These reports can be overwhelming, but you only need to focus on a few key areas.

• The Score: You'll see a performance score (e.g., 60/100). This is a general grade.

• Core Web Vitals: Look for metrics like Largest Contentful Paint (LCP). This measures how long it takes for the biggest element (usually a hero image or large text block) to appear. A slow LCP is a common problem.

• Opportunities / Recommendations: This is the most important section! Both tools will give you a "to-do" list. On a Google Site, you can't fix all of them (like "Minify CSS," Google handles that). We are going to focus on the ones you can fix.

• The Problem: You uploaded a massive 4000x3000 pixel photo directly from your camera, but it's only being displayed in a 500px wide column. The browser has to load the entire giant file and then shrink it, which is extremely slow.

• The Fix (Before You Upload):

• • Resize: Before you upload any image, resize it to be close to the actual size it will be on the site. If it's for a small icon, make it 100x100px. If it's for a full-width banner, 1920px wide is usually more than enough.

  • Compress: Use a free online tool to compress the image. This removes hidden data and reduces the file size without sacrificing quality.

    • Recommended Tools: TinyPNG.com (works for JPG and PNG), Compressor.io or Squoosh.app.

  • Choose the Right Format: Use .jpg for all photographs. Use .png only for graphics that require a transparent background (like logos).

• The Problem: Every time you use the "Embed" tool (for a YouTube video, a Google Map, a Google Calendar, or custom HTML/code), you are forcing the user's browser to load an entirely separate webpage inside your page. This is a major source of slowdown.

• The Fix:

  • Be Minimalist: Ask yourself, "Is this embed absolutely essential?"

  • For YouTube: Instead of embedding a video at the top of your page (which can block your LCP), consider placing it further down. Or, take a screenshot of the video, use it as a regular image, and link the image to the YouTube video. This way, it only loads when the user clicks.

  • For Custom Code: Be very careful with third-party widgets (like weather, "like" buttons, etc.). They are often slow and can break. Remove any you don't truly need.

• The Problem: You have one single page with 50 sections, hundreds of images, and dozens of text boxes. The browser is struggling to draw all of these elements.

• The Fix:

  • Simplify your layout. Use fewer sections where possible.

  • If a page is truly massive, consider splitting it into a few logical sub-pages (e.g., "Home," "About," "Services"). This makes each individual page much faster to load.

Your job is to optimise your content (images, embeds, structure). Google handles the rest.

Improving your page speed is an ongoing process. Run a test, make the changes above (start with your images!), and then run the test again. You will be amazed at how much your score can improve by simply compressing a few key images and removing one slow embed.