I was checking in on the status of my website in Google PageSpeed Insights using the Lighthouse scanner built into Google Chrome. I wasn’t happy with the results.
Why The Scores Dropped
The scores were all green last time I checked. I hadn’t made any updates to theme since then. However, I do know that the score can change if you rescan. And Google announced several major updates to Lighthouse over the past few months. And of course, it’s always important to remember that a fallible human made the updates.
A lot of times with websites, checking the network activity will direct you to the route or asset that is causing problems.
The Lighthouse report also suggests that could be an issue.
A large amount of the activity seems to be from Google AdSense. I don’t like ads myself and I don’t like Google’s advertising empire either. So, I set about removing the AdSense code and re-ran the Lighthouse report.
After Removing Google AdSense
After removing the Google AdSense code from the applicable templates and clearing the cache, the network traffic was reduced considerably. I expect the Lighthouse report to show better results as well.
After removing Google AdSense, the scores are much higher. I also updated a few img alt tags, which improved scores for accessibility and SEO. But this was mostly AdSense. What remains are some performance issues that are a bit hard to resolve due to WordPress’ architecture.
Conclusion
This is another case where I feel let down by Google. Not only do they frequently change the way their search engine ranking works, many of these changes impact other products. I shouldn’t need to remove one service to satisfy another service. I wasn’t having much luck with AdSense and I was considering removing it anyway, so that wasn’t a big deal for me. But others depend on these pieces working together to generate income. As for me, I’m considering replacing Google Analytics before it changes as well.