Kills Website Performance

Hi @mgparisi,

Thanks for reaching out, and sharing details of your performance testing.

While there are many factors impacting a performance score, Site Kit doesn’t add any addition code or make any plugin specific http requests upon installation and connecting the Tag Manager module. If you check your sites source code with Tag Manager manually inserted, without Site Kit active, and then compare this to your site with only Site Kit used to insert your Tag Manager code snippet (and not other additional modules) you’ll notice no difference other than a meta tag, and no additional http browser requests.

…and pagespeed complains about the gtm file in javascript execution time.

As Site Kit also inserts the Google Tag Manager snippet in the recommended placement I suspect you’ll find any of the same PageSpeed Insights opportunities if inserting the same code snippets manually, as advised by the PageSpeed Insights platform.

I’d be happy to work with you to check for any performance differences if you wish. That is of course if you’re happy to test out the plugin once more, as I did with another user, which you can find here. I’ve already recorded your current score on both the PageSpeed Insights platform and the web.dev site, both which use the same Lighthouse technology and output the same report (PSI score | web.dev score). Let me know if you’d like me to do so, and I can suggest some tests to perform on your site.

We also have some documentation on the plugin website regarding front end performance with Site Kit.

Let me know if you have any questions with the above.

Unfortunately, this is incorrect. I’ve seen you claim this falsely in the past, and you got to stop. Using your own methods above, I can show you you’re wrong. Lets schedule a time for a demonstration? Please send me details on how I can show you this…

If you’d like to see this, I can show it on MULTIPLE websites. The Google Page Speed decreases your own Google Lighthouse Speed Page Score and your online tool by 20 points.

I’m sorry, but this plugin DUMPS all sorts of Javascript, including the advertising javascript even on sites & web pages not using these features. And it seems to include MULTIPLE Google Tag Manager tags, with IDs I don’t even recognize.

Part of the problem is there is NO way to turn off the Javascript from loading for Ads. On pages with Exclusions to which pages, you can see it adds the javascript for the ads anyways.

You can see that on this website. https://newsboyaudio.com

You can clearly see the ads are excluded from showing on the home page. Yet the ads javascript continues to load on that page.

If I was to enable this on Proper Programming, without ANY ads showing and without even setting up ads, you will find this javascript is added.

This javascript, and a few others you seem to dump with no condition, drop the speed by 20. They certainly show up as async, but your test continues to drop the score regardless.

If you’d like, I can show you before and after. I can provide screen shots, code, and more about what you’re doing. But please, try it yourself. You can reproduce this easily. And stop telling people that it has no affect. We can show you definitively it DOES!

It takes my site, WITH GOOGLE TAG MANAGER, that ranks 70-80 down to 50. I can show you this all day long. And this is with BOTH Google designed page speed tests. Light house and the online one.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.
• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.

Here is proof. The score on the left, without Google Site Kit enabled. The score on the right, with it enabled. As you can see. Both on mobile. 15 point differences in the score.

View post on imgur.com

If you want, I can demonstrate it all day long. It does this regularly, and without fail. Your plugin is THE ONLY thing that changes. And its almost certainly because the tests you use either changed, and/or the poor handling of the loading of unnecessary javascript on pages we dont want it on. (With no way to shut it off)

I’d love to use your plugin, but this is not good.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Michael.

Hi @mgparisi

Thanks for sharing details of your analysis. See below response to some of your comments:

I’m sorry, but this plugin DUMPS all sorts of Javascript, including the advertising javascript even on sites & web pages not using these features. And it seems to include MULTIPLE Google Tag Manager tags, with IDs I don’t even recognize.

Site Kit doesn’t load any JavaScript on the front end up a user site upon install and setting up Search Console, apart from the admin toolbar JS resources, which are only visible by site administrators. Adding other services, such as Analytics, AdSense or Tag Manager will result in JavaScript resources loading, the same as if set up manually.

For clarity we’ve added a section on the plugin website that shows all the code snippets added via Site Kit.

In your case if you want to open a support topic regarding multiple Tag Manager snippets on any of your sites feel free to do so, and we’d be happy to investigate this separately. Please include your Site Health information for this site and we can check this.

Regarding the advertising JavaScript you mentioned, Site Kit does not insert any AdSense code on users sites unless users have connected the AdSense module within the plugin, and left the option to “Let Site Kit place AdSense code on your site” enabled. If ads are appearing, with Site Kit’s AdSense module disconnected on your site, I’m happy to check this for you if you want to open a support topic individually, referencing a site where this is occurring.

Part of the problem is there is NO way to turn off the Javascript from loading for Ads. On pages with Exclusions to which pages, you can see it adds the javascript for the ads anyways.

You are correct that there is no option to exclude pages on your site from serving ads within the plugin, as there is already such configurations at AdSense level. We do however, have a filter you can use for the same purpose, which won’t load the AdSense JS resource within Site Kit.

Note that if you have ads blocked from pages at AdSense level, this doesn’t mean no network trips to the AdSense network. As long as the code snippet remains, whether via Site Kit or no, there will be a trip made via the AdSense code snippet and a JS snippet executed, to ensure ads are not served – based on the settings you’ve applied – at AdSense level. This is the same if you’ve placed an AdSense code snippet manually, and not via Site Kit.

You can clearly see the ads are excluded from showing on the home page. Yet the ads javascript continues to load on that page.

This is because you’ve disabled AdSense on the homepage at AdSense level. Site Kit only inserts your AdSense snippet, and the snippet must appear, with the JS resource loading in order to make a trip to the AdSense network to apply this setting.

If you want to ensure the Site Kit placed AdSense snippet does not appear on your homepage, you can use the googlesitekit_adsense_tag_blocked filter, and I’m happy to create a mini plugin for this purpose for you if you wish. Using this filter will also mean the AdSense snippet does not appear on any pages where you’ve used the filter to disable Site Kit placing AdSense code on specific pages.

Note that we take performance very seriously, and we’re always looking at ways to optimize where we can, whether it’s with how the Site Kit admin toolbar works or from the Site Kit dashboards. As it sounds like you may be a developer or web expert yourself, based on your initial reported site URL, if you can determine any Site Kit specific blocks, or anything happening which you find unusual on the front end, we’re more than happy to investigate.

I’d love to use your plugin, but this is not good.

Sorry to hear that. If this is based on your performance testing, which you’ve shared already, this doesn’t show whether you manually added Tag Manager, AdSense and Google Analytics to your site, in place of Site Kit. Rather than comparing your site with and without Site Kit active, a more appropriate test would be comparing your site with all the same Google services manually added, and then comparing this when added using Site Kit.

Let me know if you would like me to create you a mini plugin to disable the Site Kit placed AdSense code on your homepage, or if you have any queries with the above.