Speed Optimization Scams

Speed Optimization has emerged as a completely new field with great job opportunities in recent years. Freelancers and Developers offering Speed Optimization make millions of dollars every year.

The most concerning thing is that many people are just after scores of speed tools like Google Page Speed Insights instead of focusing on real user experience. After observing this trend and earning potential through speed optimization many Freelancers, Agencies, and developers have opted for Black Hat Techniques to trick the Speed Tools and show high Page Speed scores to Clients. Google is getting smarter with every new update and we might see all these sites getting penalized very soon.

In this article, I will discuss common speed optimization scams that most freelancers on Fiverr and other Freelancing platforms are doing these days. All these techniques involve “Cloaking”.

What is Cloaking?

Cloaking is a technique in which Search Engine Bots and Human Vistors are presented with different Content. As an example, you can imagine serving two different website Themes. One Theme loading more assets are served to real visitors while an empty Theme with no assets is delivered to Google Bots to trick the system and get good results. It is the Black Hat Technique and sites relying on Cloaking can get penalized.

Google’s Matt Cutts has explained Cloaking in detail.

Some common Black Hat Methods and Scams are as under:

Different Theme based on User-Agent

This scam is most common in WordPress speed Optimization. I have seen multiple cases where Freelancer has just served a completely different Theme to Google Page Speed Insights and GTmetrix to get perfect scores on these tools.

How to detect this scam?

This scam can be easily detected by comparing the screenshot preview of speed tools with the original preview of your website.

For example:

You can see the GTmetrix Preview on the front page of our website below:

Similarly, Preview on Google Page Speed Insights can be observed:

If you notice that the screenshot shown by page speed tools is distorted, different, or broken then you might be one of those who are scammed by so-called Speed Optimization experts.

Using Nitropack

Well, you might not consider this scam but I consider this a scam due to two reasons.

The first reason is that NitroPack unloads Javascripts until user interaction so that Page Speed Insights cannot detect all these scripts. So what real users experience is completely different.

Secondly, most of the freelancers using Nitropack do not inform their clients that they have used Nitropack for their Site. Using a CDN service for someone’s website without giving him access to that and without informing him is very unprofessional. Unfortunately, there are many Top Rated Freelancers on Top Platforms who are scamming people by promising something which is completely different from just the installation of Nitropack.

Delaying Scripts Until User Interaction

It’s the same thing that Nitropack does but I have discussed Nitropack Separately because most of the freelancers use that and keep it secret from clients by hiding the plugin from the dashboard.

It’s sad to see that most of the cache plugin developers have incorporated the “Delay JS until user interaction” option which is nothing but an attempt of Cloaking the Search Engine Bots because you cannot force real users not to interact until initial loading is complete. So real visitors will still have to wait until JavaScript loading is complete but the results of Page Speed Tools will not include that JavaScript Loading in the results.

Congratulations to developers and users who have found a way to cheat the Search Engine Bots to get high scores. Google is way smarter than you and you might see consequences in the next few years.

How to avoid such Scams?

It’s actually very hard because I noticed some sellers who are Top Rated with 3000+ positive reviews on Fiverr but still using these Black Hat Techniques to scam people and make their money.

You can detect whether you have been scammed or not by inspecting the source code of your website and through a comparison of GTmetrix Waterall with the actual waterfall that you can observe in your browser console.

You can also reach out to me through Contact Form if you need any help from me.