WebProNews

Last month Google spoke about an initiative it was kicking off to call upon webmasters to help make the web faster. Larry Page once said he envisioned a web that could be surfed as easily as flipping through the pages of a magazine. This initiative is kind of an extension of that way of thinking.

Today, Google has shared a new tool called Page Speed, which can show webmasters how to increase the speed of pages on their sites. It's actually a Firefox/Firebug add-on that can be used for the evaluation of web page performance and provide suggestions for improvement.

Page Speed looks at things like:

- Did you compress your images?

- Did you set proper caching headers?

- Did you write efficient Javascript?

- Etc.

The tool carries out tests on your site's server configuration and front-end code. "The tests rate your site against a set of best practices proven to enhance web page performance," explains Evelyn O'Keefe of the Google Analytics Team. "When you run Page Speed on on your site's pages you will get a set of scores for each page, as well as suggestions on how to improve performance."

The following clip shows you how Page Speed works:

Google says you should use Page Speed if you want to make your site faster, keep Internet users engaged with your site, reduce your bandwidth and hosting costs, and improve the web. Best practices for Page Speed performance can be found here.