Initial Setup

PageSpeed Service was turned off on August 3^rd, 2015. Please see Turndown Information for PageSpeed Service.

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.

1. Log into the Google APIs Console

   1. Click on the activation link provided in the approval email you received from the PageSpeed Service team.
   2. Log in using the Google account you mentioned when requesting access to PageSpeed Service.
   3. Click on I agree to these terms checkbox and click on the Accept button.
   4. Click on PageSpeed Service on the left navigation bar, and you should see the following:
      
      
      

2. Provide the domain of the website you want to speed up

   1. 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.
   2. 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):
        1. 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.)
        2. 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.

3. (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.

   Preview using browser proxy (expand to view)

   Preview in Mozilla Firefox

   1. Download and install FoxyProxy Firefox Add-on from your Firefox browser. Restart the browser.
   2. 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.
   3. 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.
   4. 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.
   5. Right-click on the add-on and from the FoxyProxy menu, choose Use proxies based on their pre-defined patterns and priorities.
   6. You can now browse around on the site www.example.com to see a preview of your faster site.
   7. To switch off this preview-mode and go back to normal browsing, please right-click on the add-on and choose Completely disable FoxyProxy.

   Preview in Google Chrome

   1. Download and install Switchy Proxy.
   2. Click on the extension (present as an icon next to the omnibar). Click on Options and go to the Proxy Profiles tab.
   3. 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.
   4. 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.
   5. Click on the extension and click on the Auto Switch mode.
   6. 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.

   1. Please find the Hosts file for your operating system using this article.
   2. Lookup the IP for pagespeed.googlehosted.com using nslookup or dig. Say the IP turns out to be 72.14.203.121.
   3. Add the following entry to the Hosts file:

      72.14.203.121    www.example.com

4. 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.

5. 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.