PageSpeed: Avoid Enormous Network Payloads

Pages with large network payloads that can reduce page speed. Large network payloads cost users real money and are highly correlated with long load times.

How to Analyse in the SEO Spider

To populate this filter the PageSpeed Insights API must be connected via ‘Config > API Access > PSI’.

View URLs with this issue in the ‘PageSpeed’ tab and filter and use the lower ‘Lighthouse Details’ tab to click on the issue on the left-hand side, and see details of the network payloads on the right-hand side.

Bulk export the pages and images via ‘Reports > PageSpeed > Avoid Enormous Network Payloads’.

What Triggers This Issue

Based on HTTP Archive data, the median network payload is between 1,700 and 1,900 KiB.

To help surface the highest payloads, Lighthouse flags pages whose total network requests exceed 5,000 KiB.

How To Fix

Aim to keep your total byte size below 1,600 KiB. Defer requests until they’re needed, optimise requests to be as small as possible, and cache requests.