Why Performance Scores Change

It's common for the performance score of your site to change, even when there haven't been any modifications to the site itself. This is due to the inherent variability in how websites are delivered to the user and can be influenced by several factors, including:

• Browser and version

• Device CPU and memory

• Network latency

• Web server load

To help eliminate performance score variance, DeploymentHawk audits are performed using a consistent test environment. Our test agents run on the same hardware with dedicated vCPUs, 4 GB of memory, and SSD storage. Each test agent performs a single audit at a time to avoid contention for CPU, memory, and network resources.

The effects of network latency can be reduced by decreasing the distance between the test agent and the physical location of the site being audited. Therefore, when adding a site to DeploymentHawk, you should select an appropriate region.

#How we handle performance score variance

When a page is analyzed, we compare the performance score with the average performance score from the previous 3 audits. If the performance score has increased or decreased by 4 or more, we automatically re-analyze the page. This process is invisible to you, the user.

We're focused on providing accurate and consistent audit results, so we'll continue to identify new opportunities to eliminate score variance.