Test your website's page loading speed before you apply for a Google Ad Grant

Question

Before you apply for a Google Ad Grant check that the website's pages load fast enough, especially the home page. A slow website can cause your application to be rejected. Your Ad Grant account can even get temporarily suspended later on if the pages slow down.
 
See the Ad Grants website policy at support.google.com/grants/answer/1657899 which says "your website must load quickly" without actually defining how that's measured.
 
Google's PageSpeed Insights tool
 
Use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool: pagespeed.web.dev to test individual pages. There are options for testing on mobile or desktop: always choose mobile, since that is how most people browse websites.
 
There is no officially specified score that you need to reach, but I've observed that websites scoring 50/100 and above for performance tend to be accepted for an Ad Grant, but those in the red get rejected.
 
This isn't just a Google Ads or Ad Grants issue; a slow-loading website can adversely affect your performance in organic search.
 
Common causes of slow page loading speed
Over-sized images are usually easy to fix with some routine image optimization, regardless of what tool you use to build your website.
If redundant JavaScript code is being loaded, depending on how your website is built, that might be easy to fix or impossible. Some website-building platforms like Wix don't let you alter the code; whereas if you use WordPress, you can change any code you like.
Embedded third party code (Twitter timeline, Facebook embed) might slow down a website, in which case you need to decide how essential it really is.
A trickier problem to solve, is a long Time To First Byte (TTFB). Is there a long delay before your website even starts to load? That could be a problem on the server, or in the website code.
What if the tool says it can't even reach your website? That could indicate various problems and is important to fix, since if Google Ads can't reach your page it might disapprove ads using that landing page.
Share this report with your web developer
 
Whatever the reasons for the pages loading slowly, send the PageSpeed Insights report to your web developer and instruct them to read its recommendations to help diagnose and fix the problems. Once that's done, re-test the speed and see if it's improved.
 
If the developer replies by saying nothing's wrong, and maybe they show you that a different testing tool scores the website highly, remind them that this is the tool that Google uses.
 
The screenshot below shows a website that passes the mobile speed test with a good score:

Using Lighthouse in the Chrome browser
 
You can use a tool called Lighthouse to run the same tests from within the Chrome browser.
In the Chrome browser, navigate to your website's home page
Press F12 to bring up the Developer tools.
Click the tab for Lighthouse.
Check the option for "mobile".
Click Analyze page load.
You may need to wait for a minute or two for the results while Lighthouse audits the page.

Choose your CMS wisely
 
Some Content Management Systems (CMS) enable you to edit the code on your website and fix problems with relative ease. Some don't. Some run faster than others. 
 
If you have a WordPress website, the loading speed should always be something you can improve, or your web developer can improve.
 
But I regularly see nonprofits using Wix get rejected for Google Ad Grants. When I run speed tests (using PageSpeed Insights) to find out whether that's the cause, it almost always comes back under 50/100. The recommendations in the report are always about redundant script and other code issues. Reliably so. If they were using a better CMS they'd be able to fix coding issues, but on Wix there's little they can do.
 
This community guide was written by Jason King, an Ad Grants Certified Professional and the author of the Google Ad Grants Complete Course.
 
If you have any questions about testing website speed, please comment below.