Being On 4 cores of Intel CPU there is significant drop of speed after i updated the discourse.
I recently Updated my discourse (its pgsql database was also updated) and now its very very slow. 8GB Digital Ocean Droplet.
Results Before this update were - Mobile 75/100
I do not have any extra javascript in the page, when i tested, No Alexa, Webmaster etc scripts. Its a serious issue in Google SEO.
Discourse Team Can you please release a light version with less features for Better speed and Performance.
Or
Please guide me how can i improve upon it.
I also feels the speed difference when i Browse My own site old/new version in incognito mode (Not tested with google.)
I don’t think it would be a good idea to nuke out functionality of discourse in the name of Google pagespeed insights. In my personal opinion, pagespeed insights don’t really focus upon SEO but they rather focus upon the UX of a website.
First load may be a problem (only because all the resources are being loaded from server instead of cache) but once that’s done, there shouldn’t be any performance penalty.
Note that in your tests, Google wasn’t even able to provide an accurate metric of real-world performance… and only looked at possible optimizations. Those possible optimizations don’t seem to take into consideration that Discourse is a JS app.
I think the team is always looking for ways to make Discourse faster… but there’s little evidence that this is a serious SEO issue. Here’s some information from Google on their 2018 Page Speed Update, which is probably the most significant impact Page Speed Score has ever made on ranking:
The “Speed Update,” as we’re calling it, will only affect pages that deliver the slowest experience to users and will only affect a small percentage of queries. It applies the same standard to all pages, regardless of the technology used to build the page. The intent of the search query is still a very strong signal, so a slow page may still rank highly if it has great, relevant content.
So on the one hand, they don’t care that we’re a JS app and apply the same standard to everyone (potentially something to look out for)… but on the other hand this change only impacts a small percentage of queries and content relevance is still the primary metric for ranking.
I also feels the speed difference when i Browse My own site old/new version in incognito mode
Are you able to provide any additional details? Which version were you on previously? Did you use any of the Network tools in the Chrome inspector to measure load speed?
None of the recommendations are really relevant to us, sure we can shave off a few bytes from avatars and some tiny js scripts, but there is nothing substantial here.
I am less concerned with the page speed score and more concerned with the chrome user experience report results… I see the same complaints on my end … Would love if anyone has tips for making the actual user experience faster as this is ultimately what leads visitors to interact with your site (fast load) versus hit the back button (slow load)… Those bounces send a signal to Google that people aren’t finding what they want on the site, and that’s what leads to rankings drops… not the page speed score itself. Edit: I guess Google does say it uses speed itself as a ranking factor, but not sure exactly what metric would drive this.
So I guess this site uses Fastly as a CDN, but still has the “slow” speed rating from the chrome user experience report … possibly just impossible to get up to “moderate” or “fast” even with a CDN? I guess the nature of so much dynamic content…
