Server response time: what it measures

The check reads the response your server returns and records what it found. That observation is stored with the report, so reopening an old audit shows what was true on the day it ran rather than what the page says now. It is not a live measurement, and it is not a model’s opinion of your page.

Ruleset response-time · category performance · can count towards the checklist score

• —What a visitor experiences. One measurement from one location is a sample, not a field number.
• —Whether the delay is your origin, your CDN, or the network between.

Cache at the edge, and look at the server side if the first byte is slow everywhere.

Then verify it yourself rather than trusting the next report: reload the page, view the source, and look at the thing the check described. A check you can falsify in ten seconds is the only kind worth having.

The free headers checks this on one URL and needs no signup — the same rule, on the same page, with no credit spent. When you want the whole page assessed, an audit is covered by the trial credit.

• Reserved image dimensions
• HTML response weight
• Synchronous head scripts
• Image loading strategy

All checks and their definitions as JSON