Google Page Speed, the new CDN service for webmasters, was announced last week and this has been much anticipated because it is provided by Google. The service is currently opened to a limited set of webmasters only, fortunately I have a chance to try it for free at the moment. Therefore, I decided to set it up on my new site at DiscountedCoupon.
My first impression is that I am quite amazed at the free service as the loading speed has been decreased dramatically. I used the Pingdom Tools to measure the speed before and after launching Google Page Speed Service and here is the result:
- Before: the loading time is 5.8s
- After: the loading time is 2.3s
By using this service, Google will fetch your content, optimize and speed up your pages and then send them back to your readers. There is a notice that the service won’t work on bare domains such as discountedcoupon.net. So you must add the missing www prefix so that it could be supported by Page Speed Service.
Now, let’s take a look at the detailed instructions on how to set up Google Page Speed CDN service for your website.
1. Add Domain
After being approved for trying the service, you will see there is the new tab Page Speed Service in the Google APIs Console page.
Go to the new tab and add your domain to the textbox Serving Domain. Remember it must include the prefix www.
Then, it will require you to verify your domain’s ownership. What you need to do is adding a DNS record in your hosting provider or domain registrar.
I am using HostGator, so I go to Advanced DNS Zone Editor to add the DNS record. It will take you a few minutes for DNS settings to propagate through the Internet.
2. Setup Reference Domain
The next step is setting up reference domain, this will look up the IP address to fetch the original website’s content. So, you need to point the reference domain to your hosting IP address. It is simply done by setting a new DNS entry (A-record) for ref.discountedcoupon.net pointing to the IP address of your server (the same IP address that discountedcoupon.net is pointing to). It will take some time for the propagation completed globally, you can check it out at http://www.whatsmydns.net/#CNAME/www.discountedcoupon.net.
Fill in the textbox reference domain with ref.discountedcoupon.net and continue to the next step.
3. CNAME Site
In this step, you just need to go to your DNS provider’s administration console to add a new CNAME record. If a CNAME entry for www.discountedcoupon.net already exists, set its value to ghs.google.com. Otherwise, create a new CNAME record and with the value ghs.google.com.
All done, now you can go to Dashboard to see live traffic status. It will show Requests, Errors and Average HTML Page Load Time for you to watch. That’s great to see the performance of this website being improved. If Google charge the service for an affordable price, I will not hesitate to use it for my blogs.
Have you tried Google Page Speed on your site and what do you think about its performance?
Tung Tran
I like it. I am wondering that which service is better: MaxCDn or Google CDN?What do you think?
Tuan Do
I haven’t tried MaxCDN so I can’t make the recommendation for you. If you wonder between CloudFlare and Google CDN, I will recommend you Google.
DiTesco
Hey, congrats for being one of the few first to try GoogleCDN. I signed up for it last week but so far, no luck yet. Guess I will have to wait a while longer to test drive it too. I use CloudFlare and Incapsula and I am eager to see which of them performs best.
Anyway, looks like your site had gained a dramatic improvement. BTW, is your site WordPress? Are you using any cache plugin together with GoogleCDN?
Tuan Do
I guess they are giving the trial to more publishers this week. I tried CloudFlare before but its speed improvement didn’t impress me like Google CDN.
Yes my site is using WordPress with no cache plugin as Google said we don’t need any more cache programs. I’m sure you will like the service when you try it on your site.
DiTesco
Waiting patiently to see if I can get in soon. Thanks for letting me know about the cache plugin. I figured that much since Google says, you no longer have to worry about Gzips, compressions, and all that. At least now I know of someone who vouches for it
Tuan Do
Yeah DiTestco, that’s what I understand too.
I hope you will get the Page Speed soon to replace the current CloudFlare. I always have to type the Captcha code each time visiting your site, it is very annoying.
DiTesco
Hmmm, I did not know about that. It might be CloudFlare’s “security” thing. Can you tell me your IP range so I can whitelist it? That should solve the problem for tthe mean time.
Tuan Do
I think you should turn it off so that it couldn’t affect other readers. Could you add my IP to the whitelist? My IP range is 58.187.x.x
DiTesco
I did not turn it off, but I have set to low, which was on aggressive before. Nonetheless, i will add the IP range.. thanks.
Daniel
I guess Google will roll out massive scale in the coming time soon. I have just checked your site at Pingdom and the result was so amazing, only 3.2 seconds. In my opinion, Google CDN is worth to try but it also depends on the price they search giant offers.
Tuan Do
Yeah, I was pretty amazed with how Google delivers my site, the speed improvement is awesome. It is possible that Google will charge for the service and I guess its price will be very competitive, it can’t be higher than MaxCDN or others.
Jym | Blog Alchemy
Better than CloudFlare huh? I’d love to try it.
What are the criteria for acceptance?
Thanks for sharing your experience of this Tuan Do
Tuan Do
Hi Jym,
You could sign up and wait for your invite here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dDdjcmNBZFZsX2c0SkJPQnR3aGdnd0E6MQ&ndplr=1
Your site will be accepted sooner if it’s got high pageviews. Hope you would try it soon.
Jym | Blog Alchemy
Thanks Tuan Do. I’ll sign up now. I wonder what high page views means?
Better bookmark your post for when I get accepted
Tuan Do
I just meant if your site has good traffic, it will be approved earlier. Let me know if you have any problem setting it up.
Jym | Blog Alchemy
Sure, sure, I get the concept, I just wonder what numbers are ‘high’. Not that it matters though… We have the traffic we have (attracting more all the time of course)
Thanks again mate
Dan Whitehouse
How did you get approved for the service? Did they just notify you via email when you were good to go?
Tuan Do
Yes Dan, you just need to sign up with the link above and they will notify you via email when your site is approved.
Justin Germino
Do you still recommend or use a CDN service like Amazon S3 to host and serve static content if you use Google PageSpeed, or does this replace both Cloudflare plus non-cache CDN services as well?
Tuan Do
Hi Justin,
I tried Amazon S3 a year ago but it was a little disappointing as I didn’t see any significant increase in performance of my site. I stopped using it just after 1 month as I don’t want to pay more $20 each month for an ineffective service.
The feature I like most about Google Page Speed is that it optimizes our content before serving to readers. Maybe that’s the reason why the loading time is decreased significantly and I’m very satisfied with it. This site couldn’t load faster than 5s when I used CloudFlare also.
I think the pricing plans of the Google CDN service will decide its success now.
Justin Germino
Interesting about S3, did you use Cloudfront or just S3 itself to host files via push? Did you use the integrated with W3 Total Cache method?
I saw my Pingdom stats go from about 9sec load time to 5sec within 24 hours of switching to S3 and I haven’t even tried the Cloudfront offering yet. I agree about cost though, and if Google CDN is free and offers better speed with no need to put caching on your site then why not just remove the S3 and use Google CDN. I applied and hoping they let me test.
DragonBlogger.com right now is using Cloudflare+Amazon S3 and would really like to see how that compares to Google CDN
Tuan Do
I used S3 to host my files only and of course with W3 Total Cache but I almost didn’t see any speed improvement like on your blog. Maybe it increased by just 10 or 20 ms and I almost couldn’t see the difference.
I don’t think the Google CDN will be free as they are mentioning a lot about pricing plans. Anyways, Google has the best server infrastructure, so I think its CDN service will provide the fastest speed also. I’m very eager to see its official launch.
Marck
Good job on sharing your experience. I really want to to try Google Page Service now. If Google team is reading this, I hope that my request will be enabled soon.
The Celebopedia
I like Pingdom.com for this purpose.
Pardeep
Pingdom can only be used to monitor the site not to decrease the load time i think
olawaledaniel
Thanks for the nice post about having a CDN for our website in order to make it load faster. I have registered for the service on google but I’m still waiting for the reply…Thanks for sharing
Tuan Do
I think the Google CDN will be launched officially soon, you shouldn’t test it on your main site at the moment as we haven’t had many details about it.
Azuan
I’m just try use the Google page speed service. Must wait for a week to see the performance. anyway, thanks for your tutorial.
Tuan Do
Hi Azuan.
I’ve just tried accessing your site and the loading speed is quite impressive. Have you compared the loading time before and after using Google Page Speed?
Azuan
Oh.. really?
I’m already compare, and look good…
Tuan Do
Yes, it takes just over 1s to load your homepage completely, this seems to be good choice for your site.
I love the service and waiting for its official launch, too.
Azuan
Ok. Thanks sir..
Sally Brown
Hi Tuan,
I would like to try to use this, but am afraid I can’t even follow your instructions (which I know are actually good) because I’m not sure what some of the things are such as CNAME, A record.
I used Cloudflare for a while and had a problem doing these particular things. This is a good article and when I am more fluent with the terminology and where to go to accomplish these tasks, I’ll check it out. Thanks. Sally
Tuan Do
It’s not difficult to set up those things, Sally.
If you are using a hosting with Cpanel, you just need go to the Advanced DNS Zone Editor to set up CNAME and A record. Leave me an email if you need any help.
Sally Brown
Thank you Tuan. I’m a little overwhelmed right now with all the maintenance on blogging that I’m having a hard time finding time to write. I’m going to try to find someone to fix a few things so perhaps we can talk about this. Thanks for the reply. Sally
Swamykant
Nice tuts. I will surely try this CDN. Thanks for the information.
ondiz
I think that Cloudflare it’s the best cdn/optimization service!
rudraksha
Pagespeed increases the speed of website nearly 0.4 sec. Does that found to be impressing ?
Tuan Do
It depends on the place you are accessing your website. You need to try loading your website in different countries to see its effect.