This page contains information needed to complete the initial setup to start
using PageSpeed Service. The video shows an example of how to
perform the initial setup of your website.
NOTE: At this time, PageSpeed Service is not accepting new
signups. You can only complete the next steps if you have received
confirmation that you have been approved to use PageSpeed Service.
Log into the Google APIs Console
Click on the activation link provided in the approval email you
received from the PageSpeed Service team.
Log in using the Google account you mentioned when requesting access
to PageSpeed Service.
Click on I agree to these terms checkbox and click on
the Accept button.
Click on PageSpeed Service on the left navigation bar, and you should see the following:
Provide the domain of the website you want to speed up
Enter the domain of the website you would like to speed up and click
the Add button.
Useful tips (expand to view):
If the website you wish to speed up is a bare domain name, such
as example.com without the www prefix, you
will first need to setup its full domain name,
say www.example.com, as instructed in the console. When
you finish the setup process for the full domain, please refer
to this FAQ for
guidance on configuring the bare domain to also get the benefits of
the service.
If your serving domain has already been configured for use with PageSpeed Service, then you will not be able to set it up again. You will need the
previous owner to delete the old project before you can set it up again.
If you need multiple users to manage a site for PageSpeed Service, you
can add multiple owners from the Team panel in the Google APIs
Console.
If you have never verified the ownership of your domain through Google Webmaster Central, your dialog will look like this:
Click Claim Ownership and follow the steps in Google Webmaster Central.
Useful tips: (expand to view)
Verification errors:
If you keep getting a Verification failed error in Webmaster
Central, then make sure your DNS record contains the correct verification
string. You can check the verification string on your site by one of the
following methods (replace example.com with your domain name):
Go to
SuperTool and put txt: example.com into the input box.
Then click on the Lookup button. (Note that Google is not
affiliated with MxToolbox, Inc.)
At the command line prompt from your computer, enter dig example.com
txt.
If you updated your DNS record correctly, it should show the recent DNS updates
you made.
Note: DNS records typically take an hour to
propagate, but sometimes it may take up to 4 hours. Your DNS provider should
have more accurate information on DNS TTLs.
Using other verification
methods:
Even if you already verified your site with Google Webmaster Central using the HTML
verification method or any other method, you will need to verify your site again
using the DNS TXT record verification method. Please note that some
hosting providers or registrars such as MelbourneIT, Yahoo, and 1and1 do not
support DNS TXT record creation. As a workaround, you can move to a different
DNS hosting provider that supports TXT record creation.
Error for sites hosted on Google
products:
If you see the error "Cannot enable the service for this domain..."
on pressing Continue in the Verification
succeeded state, it means that your site is currently hosted
on Google and associated with one of these Google products already. Please see
these suggestions in
the FAQ for ways to enable PageSpeed Service in this case.
(Optional) Preview how your site will look when served by PageSpeed Service
Previewing your site will allow you to experience how your website will render
when you start using PageSpeed Service. If you encounter any issues with pages
not rendering correctly, you can
blacklist the offending URLs from the Rewriter Settings pane in
the Google APIs Console, and preview your site again. The preview methods
described here should not be used to measure speed up of your site, since these
will not provide accurate results. Instead run tests to
measure the speed up. You can preview
using either of the following methods:
Note: If your machine requires a proxy to access the Internet, neither of these methods will work for you.
The add-on will be visible at the right-bottom edge of your browser.
Click on this add-on and click on the Add New Proxy button. In the
new dialog box that opens up, in the Proxy Details tab, add
pagespeed.googlehosted.com as Host and 80 as
Port.
In the URL Patterns tab, click on the Add New
Pattern button, enter My
domain for Pattern Name and http://www.example.com/*
for URL pattern. Click OK and close the dialog box.
Confirm that only My Domain and the Default proxies
are in Enabled state (indicated
by a check mark against the Proxy Name) and then close the FoxyProxy dialog
box.
Right-click on the add-on and
from the FoxyProxy menu, choose Use proxies based on
their pre-defined patterns and priorities.
You can now browse around on the site www.example.com to see a
preview of your faster site.
To switch off this preview-mode and go back to normal browsing, please
right-click on the add-on and choose Completely disable
FoxyProxy.
Click on the extension (present as an icon next to the omnibar). Click on
Options and go
to the Proxy Profiles tab.
Create a new proxy profile, say GHS, select the Manual
configuration radio button and add
pagespeed.googlehosted.com as Host and 80 as
Port. Save the profile.
Go to the Switch Rules tab. Check the Enable Switch
Rules checkbox. Click on the New Rule button and add a rule,
with Rule Name as My Domain, URL Pattern
as http://www.example.com/*, Pattern Type as
Wildcard and Proxy Profile as GHS. Click
Save and close the Options browser tab.
Click on the extension and click on the Auto Switch mode.
You can now browse around on the site www.example.com to see a
preview of your faster site.
Preview in other browsers
Set your browser's HTTP proxy to pagespeed.googlehosted.com:80. Proxying of Ads and
other 3rd party content may have undesired effects, so its best to turn
proxying off for resources on such domains. You can do this by
specifying a blacklist in the browser proxy settings. Some browser
extensions allow you to whitelist URLs for proxying and represent a more
accurate preview.
Preview your site by changing the Hosts file (expand to view)
Set www.example.com domain to point to IP of
pagespeed.googlehosted.com in your machine, by changing the Hosts file.
Accessing www.example.com from your machine should now cause
PageSpeed Service to serve out the pages.
Please find the Hosts file for your operating system using
this article.
Lookup the IP for pagespeed.googlehosted.com using nslookup or dig.
Say the IP turns out to be 72.14.203.121.
Add the following entry to the Hosts file:
72.14.203.121 www.example.com
Setup an Origin Host
PageSpeed Service needs to fetch content from your host servers. This
requires specifying the name of an origin host that the service can
fetch content from. In this step you will set up a new DNS record for the
origin host.
Sometimes we can identify a suitable origin hostname for your site from its
DNS record and pre-fill this information for you. If the Status message for
your domain is “Not Ready - Setup Serving domain”, then
skip this section and proceed to Step 5. You will be
able to edit the recommended origin host name if you wish after setup is
complete.
Otherwise you will need to setup an origin domain name,
say origin.example.com. Click “Setup origin host”
and follow instructions. Detailed instructions for some popular DNS
providers are at this page. Remember to Save the DNS
changes when you're done.
PageSpeed Service will send requests to the origin domain with the Host header set to match your primary domain. You should not expose
the origin domain origin.example.com to avoid receiving
any direct traffic.
Useful tips (expand to view):
Changes to DNS entries can take an hour or more to propagate. Your DNS
provider can provide more specific information.
From the command line prompt on your computer, you can type
dig origin.example.com to see if your DNS changes have propagated. If
your changes have propagated, your domain should resolve to the IP address of
your servers, that you just set. Since DNS propagation is not uniform across
the globe, you can see the propagation globally at
http://www.whatsmydns.net/#CNAME/www.example.com, after replacing
www.example.com with your serving domain.
Setup the Serving Domain
In this last step, you will point your site's main DNS record to Google
datacenters. Click “Setup serving domain” and follow the
instructions to add a CNAME (Alias) record for your serving domain (or edit
the existing record) to point to PageSpeed servers. If your website serves
pages over SSL, please first consult
the SSL Setup Guide to support SSL
traffic on your site, before proceeding with the DNS change.
Detailed instructions for some popular DNS providers are
at this page. Remember to Save the DNS
changes when you're done.
Here is one example of how to correctly setup the DNS records for use with
PageSpeed Service. Here 1.2.3.4 represents the IP address for your
site, provided by your hosting provider. The @ symbol is
used in many DNS editors to represent the bare domain name of your site, such
as example.com
Example Initial Configuration:
Record Type Host Points to
A @ 1.2.3.4
CNAME www @
After setup with PageSpeed Service:
Record Type Host Points to
A @ 1.2.3.4
A origin 1.2.3.4
CNAME www pagespeed.googlehosted.com
If you have an existing DNS A-record for your serving domain,
say www.example.com, delete it so
that www.example.com has only the CNAME-record that you just
added (pointing to pagespeed.googlehosted.com). You should not
delete any other DNS records associated with your site.
Note:
Some DNS providers require adding a period symbol (.)
at the end of the CNAME value field in order to point to a different
domain. So if you discover that your CNAME record was incorrectly
changed to something
like pagespeed.googlehosted.com.example.com then please
edit the record value to
“pagespeed.googlehosted.com.” with the period
symbol at the end to fix the problem.
If you previously pointed your CNAME entry
to ghs.google.com or ghs.googlehosted.com,
we strongly recommend changing it to point
to pagespeed.googlehosted.com instead. This will allow
you to avail of recent improvements in the way Google crawlers operate
on your site.
Useful tips (expand to view):
Changes to DNS entries can take an hour or more to propagate. Your DNS
provider can provide more specific information.
Go to
http://www.whatsmydns.net/ (not affiliated with Google) and enter your
serving domain, such as www.example.com in the DNS
Propagation Check text field. Then select CNAME from
the drop down box and click on the Search button. If your
changes have propagated, your domain should resolve
to pagespeed.googlehosted.com for all the locations. This indicates
that your site is now enabled and serving through PageSpeed Service.
The CNAME value should not be the IP address
of pagespeed.googlehosted.com as this precludes all benefits of
global serving of traffic.
If some of your pages break, follow these
instructions to
disable rewriting on these pages.
“Bare domains” are two level domains such
as example.com. Note the missing www prefix. Such
domains are not supported by PageSpeed Service. To correctly configure the
bare domain of your site, follow the setup instructions
in this FAQ. This will ensure
that visitors to the bare domain of your site benefit from PageSpeed
Service, and that Google indexes and redirects search traffic to the
faster pages.
You can now monitor near-real time traffic and latency metrics for your web
site from the “Overview” tab.
You can always refer to the FAQ or consult
the resources if you need help
troubleshooting or have questions.
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