Improve site performance

This article is for administrators of the classic Google Sites (no Publish button at the top right). Get help for administrators of the new Google Sites.

Sites that take a long time to load might be caused by temporary client or server issues, which generally resolve fairly quickly. Try reloading the site later to see if the problem fixes itself. You can also check the Google Workspace Status Dashboard for any ongoing service outages.

Identify the problem

Identify the problem

Test your site across a variety of different environments to help isolate and identify the source of the problem. For example:

• Is the issue reproducible on a different browser?
• Is the issue reproducible on a different computer or operating system?
• Is the issue reproducible on a different network?
• If you’re using a firewall or proxy, is the issue reproducible on a network without the firewall or proxy?

If you can't resolve the problem and there are no service disruptions listed on the Google Workspace Status Dashboard, contact support with the environment and network information above.

Best practices

Try the following to help speed up classic Sites that load slow.

Split up pages, attachments, and gadgets

Although you can create unlimited pages within a site, thousands of pages and attachments can slow the site and create a poor user experience. Numerous gadgets on a single page requires each gadget to pull information from the Google servers. The site or individual pages might be disabled or temporarily unavailable at times.

Try breaking large sites into multiple related sites, splitting up gadgets between different pages, or both.

Disable Page-level Permissions

If page-level permissions have been enabled, the sharing setting of each page will be checked. This can cause the site to load slowly if the site has a lot of pages and has been shared with many collaborators.

1. Visit the site that is loading slowly.
2. Click the blue Share button.
3. In the upper-right corner of the Sharing and Permissions page, click the Turn page-level permissions off button.
   
   Tip: If page-level permissions are disabled, the button says Enable page-level permissions.

Disable automatic navigation

Dynamically generated content such as automatic navigation can cause the site to load slowly. If the site has a lot of pages or many levels of pages, it’s best to disable automatic navigation and manually choose which pages to display.

1. Visit the site that is loading slowly.
2. In the upper right, click the gear icon and then select Edit site layout.
3. Hover over the sidebar until the navigation setting bar appears, then click on it to edit the sidebar gadget.
4. On the Configure navigation dialog, uncheck Automatically organize my navigation.
5. Select the pages you’d like to show on the sidebar.
   
   Tip: If you don’t see all the pages you want to show, click Add page to bring them to the Configure navigation dialog.