Web page performance scoring

1. A computer-implemented method for reporting a Web page performance score for said Web page, comprising computer-implemented operations of:

heuristically calculating a performance sub-score for each of a plurality of Web page performance metrics;

combining said performance sub-scores to produce at least one interpretable Web page performance score; and

outputting a report related to said at least one interpretable Web page performance score.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein heuristically calculating a performance sub-score for each of a plurality of Web page performance metrics comprises computer-implemented operations of:

monitoring operation of a Web page as it loads in real time;

analyzing at least one Web page metric related to performance of said Web page as said Web page is active; and

heuristically deriving a Web page performance score for said Web page based on at least one result of said analyzing.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising computer-implemented operations of:

receiving a URL (universal resource locator) of a Web page to be analyzed;

receiving a specification of link depth to follow from said URL;

responsive to user selection of a ‘restrict URLs’ setting, receiving a restrict URLs setting to restrict pages analyzed to links that begin with said URL; and

receiving a page timeout value.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising computer-implemented operations of:

receiving entered network parameters; and

receiving entered visitor parameters.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein receiving entered network parameters comprises computer-implemented operations of:

receiving an entered bandwidth value for the visitor's connection;

receiving an entered compression factor available to the visitor;

receiving an entered time taken for the visitor's client to perform a DNS lookup; and

receiving an entered ping latency value comprising the time required for a ping to travel from the visitor's machine to the web server and back.

6. The method of claim 4 , wherein receiving entered visitor parameters comprises computer-implemented operations of:

receiving an entered revisit time;

receiving an entered intrapage time; and

receiving an entered perception time.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein said plurality of performance metrics comprises:

a ‘first visit’ score, wherein said first visit score assumes a visitor has not been to the site before or that the visitor's cache has been emptied;

a ‘second visit’ score, wherein said second visit score assumes the visitor has previously visited a page and is revisiting after the time specified by a Revisit Time parameter;

a ‘total’ score, wherein said total score is calculated from the time required to load all files required by the web page; and

a ‘blocking score’, wherein said blocking score is calculated solely from files which may potentially block display of a page until said files are completely downloaded, said blocking score serving to give a measure of how quickly the user experiences some feedback that the page is loading.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein values for each of said first visit score and said second visit score are reported for each of said total score and said blocking score, wherein said scores are aggregated to result in said page score.

9. The method of claim 1 , wherein said report includes sections for at least one of:

page score;

notes;

summary statistics;

file cache data; and

links.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein said ‘notes’ section is configured to provide recommendations for improvements;

wherein said ‘summary statistics’ section is configured to provide information regarding the web page;

wherein the ‘file cache’ data section is configured to contain detail cache information for each file included in the web page; and

wherein the ‘links’ section is configured to report each link found on the page, along with an effective score which measures the time required to load the linked page, once the original page's content has been loaded.

11. The method of claim 1 , wherein outputting said report comprises at least one computer-implemented operation of:

responsive to a user issuing a request for a report, receiving said issued request for a report;

responsive to receiving said issued request for a report, generating said report;

displaying said report;

responsive to a user request, saving said generated report, wherein said saved, generated report is accessible by means of a URL.

12. The method of claim 1 , said computer-implemented operations further comprising:

calculating any of: how much text is found on a page, number of domains, and outside files;

producing a statistical breakdown of said page; and

calculating a score based on performance of said page.

13. The method of claim 1 , said computer-implemented operations further comprising:

measuring relative performance of Web pages interactively as they are being developed.

14. The method of claim 1 , said computer-implemented operations comprising: visiting any of: a single page and all pages linked from a page up to a specified depth, while providing scores, overall statistics, and details for each included file.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein said computer-implemented operations are implemented without user interaction.

16. One or more computer-readable media having computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

heuristically calculating a performance sub-score for each of a plurality of Web page performance metrics;

combining said performance sub-scores to produce at least one interpretable Web page performance score; and

outputting a report related to said at least one interpretable Web page performance score.

17. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 16 , wherein the at least one interpretable Web page performance score represent a potential page load performance.

18. The one or more computer-readable media of claim 16 , wherein the Web page performance score is reported in real time.

19. An apparatus comprising:

a heuristic module to calculate a performance sub-score for each of a plurality of Web page performance metrics;

a performance module to combine said performance sub-scores to produce at least one interpretable Web page performance score; and

a reporting module to output a report related to said at least one interpretable Web page performance score.

20. The apparatus of claim 19 , wherein the report includes a Web page performance score for each of a plurality of network connection types.