Google Speed Insights Fix Not Working for Shopify? Here is Why

Recently I’ve seen many people and client seeking hope on Google Speed Insights because Shopify has used the same tech for it’s reports.  Many store owners are seeing a scary “your store is slow than other similar store” warnings in their dashboard, and it’s scary!

They’re Not Wrong, Speed is Very Important

So apart from the obvious (online shoppers hate slow websites), your site speed also determines your feasibility for ranking on Google Search.  Google takes into account many factors, but the EASIEST one to pick out is for your related to your site speed.  And although nobody is supposed to know the secrets of exactly how google ranks your site, SEO scientists have been able to prove through empirical studies their theories from year to year.

Your Fixes for Google Speed Insights are Not Working

They’re not working because Shopify locks you and developer out many parts of your theme file.  When trying to optimize a Shopify store, I’ve come across many JS / CSS files which I simply cannot eliminate. Try following the advice on Web.dev or Lighthouse to the tee, and you’ll find that 70% of the time, there’s simply nothing you can do!

Here is a line by line record of a client’s Shopify site which was already running quite fast, but he wanted it even FASTER through Google Speed Insights:

As seen from the above, we are simply being punished by things we have little control over.  And when there is bad code, it’s intermixed into one giant JS file (vendor-scripts-v6.js) from the original theme developer.  Within the giant file are plugins inserted to help the theme building process.  When I tried to clean it line by line, the results were not fantastic and often crashed the website!

There Are Solutions Out There

There are of course other solutions out there and the key is to just use common sense and ignore Google Speed Insights for a bit.  For example, the HOME PAGE and PRODUCT pages are probably places you want ads or new visitors to load quickly for.  You could move scripts into lesser used pages like your Category / Collections page, ASSUMING the script was something that isn’t essential to the aforementioned.

You Can Relax Though!

Why? Because Google Speed Insights is simply not a reflection of real business success.  As said by many others already, even if you go down the list and convinced Shopify to fix these core issues or did the usual “minify, defer, passive, etc”, it might not change your score!  Your speed score will also CHANGE hour to hour, by the way.

And if you’re still convinced, look at the following scores for pages like APPLE, AMAZON, and GOOGLE itself.  Looks like Google can take it’s own advice, no?