Shouldn't Web Optimization Companies Own Sites Be Optimized?

Google wants your websites optimized to load quickly and just like Lola from the musical Damn Yankees, whatever Google wants, Google gets.

There are lots of companies offering to improve your page load times so I said to myself, "Gee. I wonder how well their sites perform?" The logical and easiest ways to test them are to use Page Speed, Yslow and WebPageTest. Everyone knows that these companies are smart enough to know somebody is going come along and perform the obvious tests on their sites. Right?

Granted: Page Speed and Yslow don't measure the page loading times of a website per se, but they measure factors that contribute greatly to site performance.

I used WebPageTest to measure the actual loading speed. The results are very interesting — especially if you look at the reports. Why these speeds are the way they are is best figured out by the Internet gods. Now, what do these numbers mean? Well they mean whatever you want them to mean. Flanders' Third Law of Life states, "Any side of an argument can be proven right—it all depends on how you cut up and present the data."

As to the quality of the these organizations' products, I can't even begin to guess. Like everything, it depends on your situation. I sure as heck wasn't testing out their products/services. My test results are just…interesting.

The Sites In Alphabetical Order

Notes:

I tested the home pages for the sites except for Cotendo. I tested both Cotendo's home page and DSA product page because I was afraid I was going to get widely divergent scores. (I didn't except for the WebPageTest scores.) I would have tested CompuWare's home page, but I tested the page I thought was applicable to improving customers' website speed. Their product line confused me. Several of these sites had rotating graphics, which explains the variance in the photos.

Tests were conducted on June 13 using Firefox 4.01, Firebug 1.72, Page Speed 1.11 and Yslow 2.1.0. WebPageTest was conducted using the defaults—Dulles, VA, using DSL and IE 8. Obviously, the bigger your pipe the better things are for you <grin>. Pages were downloaded on June 14.

Everybody (I believe) failed Yslow's "Use a Content Delivery Network (CDN)" because Yslow only accepts certain recognized CDNs (Amazon, etc.). Whether or not these companies are actually using their own CDNs is something I can neither confirm nor deny, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did. To me, as long as a company is caching and compressing files, it's OK. The most common mistakes? Too many external CSS and Javascript files.

As far as I know, I have no financial relationship with any of these companies. More importantly, I don't have any financial relationship with companies not listed. It's possible these companies have advertised on WPTS, but Google handles that and I rarely look at who's advertising. The companies chosen were based on my Google searches and notes I've gathered. I'm sure I've missed someone. They're probably glad.

The Sites Listed by WebPageTest Score
(ascending order, by seconds)

The Sites Listed by Page Speed and Yslow Total
(descending order)

The Sites Listed by Page Speed Score
(descending order)

The Sites Listed by Yslow Score
(descending order)