Gzip is a compression method. Basically it compress files for your website in order to get them to your visitors faster. Your webserver does all the work involved.

When a user visits your website a request is made to your server to deliver files. The bigger these files are the longer it’s going to take for them to get to your browser and appear on the screen. Gzip compresses your webpages and style sheets before sending them over to the browser. This drastically reduces transfer time since the files are much smaller.

In terms of cost versus benefit, gzip compression should be near the top of your page speed optimizations if you don’t have it setup already.

Why is Gzip important?

The main reason it is important is because it reduces the time it takes for a website to transfer the page files and style sheets which ultimately reduces the load time of your website. The faster your site’s load time is, the more Google and your site visitors will like it. Gzip can often shrink the size of your website 50%-75%

Test your website’s server

You can test for Gzip compatibiliity here.

Note: This test is not 100% accurate. In some certain circumstances this test can report that Gzip is not enabled when it in fact is.

Getting Gzip

If your webserver doesn’t have Gzip, talk to your Skunkworks account manager to learn more about your firm’s options for getting Gzip enabled. Skunkworks prefers to configure servers for Wordpress with both Gzip and the even more amazingBrotli compression.