: Webmaster tools site performance - reliable measurements I am measuring a few sites and use both webmaster tools and analytics to track various aspects. One of the aspects I try to measure and

@Cofer257

Put simply, the sampling methods are different. The page speed in Google Analytics is measured via Javascript, while in Google Webmaster Tools it is measured from users who have the Google Toolbar installed. I believe the Google search engine uses the latter method (there is no data sharing between Analytics and search), but they may mix in their own algorithms too.

You will likely find the numbers in GWT slower than GA: this is mainly because the Google Toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer, which is typically slower than other browsers. One could also reason that IE users are typically less computer-savvy and so may have older computers or PCs clogged up with other apps/toolbars slowing down the computer in general.

Both methods are accurate in what they actually record - i.e. if a page takes 5 seconds to load, then both methods would record 5 seconds as the loading time - however as above the results in GWT may not be accurate to your site's users as a whole.

Regarding the updates, GWT just seems to update when it feels like it. Sometimes it will update every few days, sometimes it won't update for a month. Google recently announced they are removing site speed from GWT.

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@Looi9037786

There is no way to refresh stats on Webmaster Tools. You can test submitted sitemaps though, which is helpful.

Webmaster Tools is how Google see's your website as a crawler (bot). Analytics is the way Google see's your site as a user. Analytics is also Javascript based, so users who have JS turned off are removed from any stats. Webmaster Tools is all based on Google-bot crawling data.

Webmaster Tools will show you bad links pointing to you're site, and alert you to query parameters that are causing it to crawl multiple versions of the same page (duplicate content). Analytics will tell you information about the people who somehow ended up at those broken links, like how they got there.

Also, Analytics and Webmaster Tools can share data, so the most important information for day-to-day actionable data can be (and should be) pulled into Analytics reports.

This isn't necessarily "best practices", but it's my practices. I always use both Google Webmaster Tools, and Analytics when I'm setting up a new site. Check Webmaster Tools at the beginning to make sure sitemaps, RSS, any other feeds are working properly, make sure you're site is using rel=canonical properly with any parameters you might have. After a couple of weeks having no SEO issues, you can pretty much forget about Webmaster Tools. All of the other relevant data it has is pushed into Analytics.

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